So, while I was down in Cali, during the day we’d go hiking, swimming, sailing, or just loafing on the beach. At night in the cabin, the available activities changed. You can read, play board games, talk, or play poker.
Now I was never much of a poker fan. I tried playing it a bit the last time I was in Cali, but I didn’t take to it. Well, somehow seeing Casino Royale got me more interested. So I gave it another chance.
As I played it and had the rules/tactics of the game explained to me, I started to see strong parallels to life. And I wondered if that was coincidence or if the inventers of the game planned it that way.
I’ll write down the rules/my impressions:
- You play, make your decisions based on the hand you’ve been dealt, and based on what you presume other people have (but you really don’t know, and more often than not, you never will know).
- And in turn, other players are making decisions based on the hands they’ve been dealt and on what they presume you have.
- You also don’t know which cards will turn up from the dealer.
- Early in the game you have the option of checking what other people will do, betting money, or folding (backing out).
- Sometimes you have to bet before you even know what you have in your hand.
- Later in the game, there comes a point where, once you’ve put a good amount of money on the table, you lose that option of folding. (I was not entirely clear how strong this rule was, but in any case it was strongly suggested that it was not in my interest to back out after so much was put into the pot, not just by me, but by others).
That last rule was especially profound to me.
I asked my friend ways I could improve in the game (since I always lost). He mentioned that it’s better to be more of a realist than an optimist. If you keep getting stuck on one possibility that you want rather than being open to letting some hands go, or finding other options, you won’t win in the end.
This is simply because you don’t hold all the cards. You have no control of the cards that are dealt to you, nor what others will decide to do with the cards they have been dealt, nor what cards the dealer will turn up. You can only control what you do with the cards given to you. But that hardly counts as control at all when it comes to the big picture of winning the game.
One of the biggest problems I had when I played was that I always had this strong desire to know what cards the other players were holding and/or what cards the dealer would turn up.
And while I could play it out, put more money on the table, and eventually force people to show their cards, sure I would then know what people had, but to what end and for what purpose? You just look like an idiot when you don’t have anything good in your hand, you generally won’t win if you play that way, and other players who want to win the game get annoyed when that’s done as it detracts from the main goal of winning the game.
I asked my friend, “Doesn’t it bother you not knowing what cards the other player(s) had?” He said something to the effect of, “Yes, it bothers everyone.”
Well, if you know me and/or you follow my blog, you can probably guess that I don’t like this game and its rules. But it certainly gives insight to the post I wrote on the life we choose. And I realized that if I don’t play by these rules, I can’t win. Or at least, it’s unlikely. I suppose you can play your own way, but perhaps not many people are going to want to play with you, certainly not the ones who want to win.
But I guess the analogy to life can only be taken so far. As complicated as this game is, it’s nowhere near as complicated as things in life, where there are different versions of the game (within a country and between countries, but I’m not getting into that).
I wonder if I can win this game. We are not all dealt the same hand, so we are not all living the same life. And with little control, there is no guarantee you will win in the end.
But…what is it to win the game? That’s what I have a hard time seeing. I consider also the lyrics in the song by Sting, “Shape of my Heart”, where there is some unwillingness to play by the rules.
And I’m also uncertain if in life we are really stuck in the confines of similar rules as in poker. I don’t know.
I used to think I had control. The only thing that didn’t go my way was I didn’t make it into the military. In everything else, I got what I wanted…maybe not in the amount of time that I would have liked, but I thought persistence, patience, and optimism got me there eventually. And I’m reluctant to give up that notion.
Tuesday
The life we choose?
Have you ever been told that you are a product of your own decisions? Probably. I know I certainly have. But like, most of us are aware that while this statement may be true, it has to be balanced with other factors like your upbringing, environment, and what is usually described as genetic predisposition.
I held those factors in some sort or balance from college to…well, somewhat recently. But it was in recent years…like within the last year or two that I started to give more credence to choices (making decisions) over upbringing or predisposition. Something that I just now considered while writing this is that upbringing and genetic predisposition are essentially constant, or at least things we can’t change, for the most part because they occurred in the past. But making decisions is always something we can do now to change what will happen in the future.
Still, I’ve felt recently that upbringing and predisposition have a certain subtle power that work quietly while we delude ourselves into thinking we have the power to make whatever choices we want in life. I mean, sure we can make decisions, but the question is, why do we make the decisions we make?
I was taking the bus up to Seattle from Tacoma, and I sat next to this guy with a close haircut and a big knapsack. (Tacoma has a lot of people in the military). He asked me how far Seattle is and where the train station is. I told him it takes about 45 minutes and that I’d be riding past the train station so I’d let him know which stop to get off at.
I suppose that could have been the end of our conversation, but I was curious so I asked him if he’d just returned from overseas or something. As it turned out, he’d just been released from prison on a minor offense. And this day was the first day of freedom he’d had in…I think 52 months.
The experience he had influenced his perspective quite a bit. And one of the realizations he’d had was similar to one I’d had in the past year – that life is what we make of it and it’s up to us to decide how we look at things. He said, “This bus ride, for example…it sucks. But if this is the worst thing in my life right now, it isn’t that bad.” (He’d been riding buses all morning. This was his third transfer.)
It seemed from talking with him that his experience had caused him to see things differently and make new decisions in his life. However, I also found from talking with him more, that his recent sentence was not his first. He’d been in prison before. With that history, I started to wonder if he really was going to do anything differently in his life or if he’d end up right back where he was. And if he did, then why, if he’d learned from the experience before.
So I started to wonder about the decisions I’ve made in my life and why I’ve made them. Why I do things the way I do. And the answer is…I don’t know.
At the end of Season 1 and going into Season 2, you may recall that I started to feel a sense of power, of control of my life. That I could do what I wanted. And I had considered the logic or justification for my decisions. But until recently, I neglected to consider why I see things the way I do in the first place. And now that I’m considering changing course and doing things differently, I’m suddenly finding the barriers of my upbringing and predisposition to be much stronger than I realized…which is causing me now to feel I’ve trapped myself. It’s like, I’ve seen life a certain way and have done things a certain way for so long, it feels like I’m stuck.
Why am I so focused on what I do and where I want to go? Why am I so inflexible? Why am I patient? Am I making decisions to be this way or am I just doing what comes naturally to me? If someone tells me that I should be more flexible or to live for the moment, aren’t they just telling me what comes naturally for them? Couldn’t I turn around to them and say that they should be more patient and see things through, and work in the direction they want to go and not to lose focus? And if they tried that, could they do it?
Or would they find, as I have, that they are stuck in the life they’re living? That it’s not fate or predestination we’re living, but that we seem to be prone to make the decisions we make.
It’s difficult for me to accept this because I’ve seen people make life-changing decisions so I believe…well, not just believe, I know it’s possible. But you have to really want it. Although, I think sometimes, experiences in our life can force us to change. Like when you hit a rock.
Well, I hope that guy I talked to on the bus can make the changes in the life he wants. And I hope that I can, too.
I held those factors in some sort or balance from college to…well, somewhat recently. But it was in recent years…like within the last year or two that I started to give more credence to choices (making decisions) over upbringing or predisposition. Something that I just now considered while writing this is that upbringing and genetic predisposition are essentially constant, or at least things we can’t change, for the most part because they occurred in the past. But making decisions is always something we can do now to change what will happen in the future.
Still, I’ve felt recently that upbringing and predisposition have a certain subtle power that work quietly while we delude ourselves into thinking we have the power to make whatever choices we want in life. I mean, sure we can make decisions, but the question is, why do we make the decisions we make?
I was taking the bus up to Seattle from Tacoma, and I sat next to this guy with a close haircut and a big knapsack. (Tacoma has a lot of people in the military). He asked me how far Seattle is and where the train station is. I told him it takes about 45 minutes and that I’d be riding past the train station so I’d let him know which stop to get off at.
I suppose that could have been the end of our conversation, but I was curious so I asked him if he’d just returned from overseas or something. As it turned out, he’d just been released from prison on a minor offense. And this day was the first day of freedom he’d had in…I think 52 months.
The experience he had influenced his perspective quite a bit. And one of the realizations he’d had was similar to one I’d had in the past year – that life is what we make of it and it’s up to us to decide how we look at things. He said, “This bus ride, for example…it sucks. But if this is the worst thing in my life right now, it isn’t that bad.” (He’d been riding buses all morning. This was his third transfer.)
It seemed from talking with him that his experience had caused him to see things differently and make new decisions in his life. However, I also found from talking with him more, that his recent sentence was not his first. He’d been in prison before. With that history, I started to wonder if he really was going to do anything differently in his life or if he’d end up right back where he was. And if he did, then why, if he’d learned from the experience before.
So I started to wonder about the decisions I’ve made in my life and why I’ve made them. Why I do things the way I do. And the answer is…I don’t know.
At the end of Season 1 and going into Season 2, you may recall that I started to feel a sense of power, of control of my life. That I could do what I wanted. And I had considered the logic or justification for my decisions. But until recently, I neglected to consider why I see things the way I do in the first place. And now that I’m considering changing course and doing things differently, I’m suddenly finding the barriers of my upbringing and predisposition to be much stronger than I realized…which is causing me now to feel I’ve trapped myself. It’s like, I’ve seen life a certain way and have done things a certain way for so long, it feels like I’m stuck.
Why am I so focused on what I do and where I want to go? Why am I so inflexible? Why am I patient? Am I making decisions to be this way or am I just doing what comes naturally to me? If someone tells me that I should be more flexible or to live for the moment, aren’t they just telling me what comes naturally for them? Couldn’t I turn around to them and say that they should be more patient and see things through, and work in the direction they want to go and not to lose focus? And if they tried that, could they do it?
Or would they find, as I have, that they are stuck in the life they’re living? That it’s not fate or predestination we’re living, but that we seem to be prone to make the decisions we make.
It’s difficult for me to accept this because I’ve seen people make life-changing decisions so I believe…well, not just believe, I know it’s possible. But you have to really want it. Although, I think sometimes, experiences in our life can force us to change. Like when you hit a rock.
Well, I hope that guy I talked to on the bus can make the changes in the life he wants. And I hope that I can, too.
Proposal for an alternative marriage setup
Finally! It’s here. This is the first draft, but I’m sure it will be revised/ratified over time.
Um, before I go into this, I’d like to give a small disclaimer/follow-up to what I said before. I said that things are “tolerable” when you know they will end. Mmm…that sounds a bit negative. The positive side would be that you appreciate things more when you know they will end. Well, I guess I did say that at the end.
But even so, with that said, it’s not to say that I don’t wish some things would last forever. I do wish some things would last and I wish there were someone that would stay in spite of all that changes.
And it’s because of this desire that I’ve come up with this marriage setup. The intent is to help ensure that a marriage will last. The way marriages are set up now are flawed and run counter to the human condition, even though they are meant to be something solid.
Before I explain my proposal, I’ll list the pitfalls of marriage and/or life.
- Everything gets old, no matter how wonderful it was at the beginning.
- Once things get old, you don’t appreciate them anymore, and you take things for granted.
- After a while, the grass starts looking greener elsewhere.
- You want what you don’t have and when you have it, you don’t want it anymore.
- The same can be said with people. You spend enough time with a person, you’re gonna get tired of them. Once you get tired of them, you’re not going to appreciate them and you’re going to take them for granted. Finally, you start looking at other people.
- In a regular relationship, this is where the couple will likely (and perhaps should) break up. But in a marriage, you no longer have that option, which is strange because in spite of the fact you’ve arbitrarily volunteered yourself to a life sentence, the human condition doesn’t change.
- But here’s another weird thing. At least, in a regular relationship (as in, non-marital), you do feel the sense that you could lose the person you’re with to someone else if you stop caring for the person you’re with or take them for granted.
- But in a marriage, people lose that sense that they could lose what they have simply because they’ve signed a contract. And they get lazy and stop trying once they’ve bagged someone. So the stability that a life-time contract was supposed to give ends up becoming a weak foundation.
- Another problem is that there is too much expectation from marriage. People are looking for that one person who is right for them and will meet all their needs. Well, people need a lot of things, which often contradict each other if you’re expecting all of them to come from one person.
- The last thing is, and I mentioned this before, forever is too long. It’s not even comprehensible. And well, I guess the rest of your life is technically a finite amount of time, but whatever.
- Anyway, so what do most people say to these problems? They’ll say, “That’s life”, or “That’s just the way it is.” As if marriage was something that came out of the natural world. It was invented! And with most things that are invented, we look for ways to improve it, make it better, especially if there are problems with the current model.
This is the way I would set up a marriage.
First of all, dealing with this problem of everything getting old or getting tired of being around someone all the time.
You get tired of someone when you’re around them all the time. Well, how can you not be around someone all the time when you live with them? When I was in university, I had roommates for the first few years. They were good friends of mine. And what do most people say about rooming with your friends? “Don’t room with your friends if you want them to stay your friends.” And sure enough, I ran into problems and in one case almost lost a good friend as a result. So what ended up helping? When I lived on my own, I got along better with all my friends.
So why don’t we apply this to marriage? If spouses didn’t live together, they’d likely get along better. They’d have their own space, and because they didn’t live together, they would not get tired of each other and they’d want to be together. Basically, you’d be maintaining a state of never having what you want, and therefore, continuing to want it.
You’d also avoid stupid little disputes about how to load a dishwasher or how to hang towels. And your little annoying habits wouldn’t be much of an issue, either.
An issue that does come up, however, is when you have children. Well, there are a number of ways to solve this. Having separate dwellings could work but it might be a pain. I propose to purchase a duplex…one that is side-by-side. One side belongs to one spouse, the other side belongs to the other spouse. Since you both own the duplex, you can do whatever you want with it. So I would take out a wall (in my mind, I picture a two-story side-by-side…doesn’t even have to be that big). Then you have a big family room, but in principal you still have your side, and your spouse has the other. You still arrange things in your half the way you want. After all, it’s still your space.
So that takes care of a number of problems right there. But there’s still the problem with becoming overly comfortable in a lifelong contract.
Again, a lifelong contract has the problem of making you lazy. You no longer have the fear (or as much fear) that you could lose the one you’re with. So you take the one you’re with for granted. And you start to take less care of your body as well. Granted, merely being physically attractive is not important. I don’t mean this in a superficial way. But not taking care of your body is definitely an adverse response to the comfort of having someone for life.
A lifelong contract also poses a problem going into marriage, making it one the most stressful things you can do in life. That just doesn’t seem right to me. Who can possibly know who they want to be with for the rest of their life? Why should anyone be forced to make such an unrealistic decision? We are always growing and changing. Just like when you date someone, you eventually change, grow apart, etc. like I’ve mentioned in previous posts.
And there is, again, the problem with not appreciating what you have when you know you’re going to have it forever.
I propose shorter, renewable contracts. Broken into more manageable lengths of time. This will accomplish three things. 1.) It will make marriage less frightening to get into, 2.) It will bring back the fear that you could lose the one you’re with, causing you not to get lazy and take them for granted, and 3.) You don’t have to make the unreasonable choice of choosing who you’ll be with for the rest of your life.
(Note: I would propose the length of the contracts be lengthened effective immediately when children come into the picture, but only until a certain age, like, 18 or something.)
Finally, the expectation of marriage. To be honest, I’m really unclear on this matter. I’ve asked married couples why they decided to get married, but I get all kinds of answers. My thinking is that it would be to start a family. Other than that, I just can’t understand why anyone would want to get married and I suspect most people don’t really consider what they’re getting themselves into.
But I think the main problem is the expectation that you’ll be happy with one person for the rest of your life and that they will be everything you need. If it didn’t happen with other relationships you were in, there’s no reason things will be any different with your spouse.
As far as how to resolve issues of other people coming into your life while you are married…mmm, I think this part of my proposal could get controversial. So I may leave it alone for now. But at any rate, all you’d have to do is make it to the end of your current contract whereupon you could make changes.
I think this is all I’ll put down for now. I’ll post this again over time as I make changes to it. For example, I’ll start to consider the lengths of the contracts.
I’ll add this as a final thought. Many people would suggest to me that learning to live together and getting past differences helps you learn to compromise and grow. But I think compromising and learning to get along causes people to become tired and apathetic.
Um, before I go into this, I’d like to give a small disclaimer/follow-up to what I said before. I said that things are “tolerable” when you know they will end. Mmm…that sounds a bit negative. The positive side would be that you appreciate things more when you know they will end. Well, I guess I did say that at the end.
But even so, with that said, it’s not to say that I don’t wish some things would last forever. I do wish some things would last and I wish there were someone that would stay in spite of all that changes.
And it’s because of this desire that I’ve come up with this marriage setup. The intent is to help ensure that a marriage will last. The way marriages are set up now are flawed and run counter to the human condition, even though they are meant to be something solid.
Before I explain my proposal, I’ll list the pitfalls of marriage and/or life.
- Everything gets old, no matter how wonderful it was at the beginning.
- Once things get old, you don’t appreciate them anymore, and you take things for granted.
- After a while, the grass starts looking greener elsewhere.
- You want what you don’t have and when you have it, you don’t want it anymore.
- The same can be said with people. You spend enough time with a person, you’re gonna get tired of them. Once you get tired of them, you’re not going to appreciate them and you’re going to take them for granted. Finally, you start looking at other people.
- In a regular relationship, this is where the couple will likely (and perhaps should) break up. But in a marriage, you no longer have that option, which is strange because in spite of the fact you’ve arbitrarily volunteered yourself to a life sentence, the human condition doesn’t change.
- But here’s another weird thing. At least, in a regular relationship (as in, non-marital), you do feel the sense that you could lose the person you’re with to someone else if you stop caring for the person you’re with or take them for granted.
- But in a marriage, people lose that sense that they could lose what they have simply because they’ve signed a contract. And they get lazy and stop trying once they’ve bagged someone. So the stability that a life-time contract was supposed to give ends up becoming a weak foundation.
- Another problem is that there is too much expectation from marriage. People are looking for that one person who is right for them and will meet all their needs. Well, people need a lot of things, which often contradict each other if you’re expecting all of them to come from one person.
- The last thing is, and I mentioned this before, forever is too long. It’s not even comprehensible. And well, I guess the rest of your life is technically a finite amount of time, but whatever.
- Anyway, so what do most people say to these problems? They’ll say, “That’s life”, or “That’s just the way it is.” As if marriage was something that came out of the natural world. It was invented! And with most things that are invented, we look for ways to improve it, make it better, especially if there are problems with the current model.
This is the way I would set up a marriage.
First of all, dealing with this problem of everything getting old or getting tired of being around someone all the time.
You get tired of someone when you’re around them all the time. Well, how can you not be around someone all the time when you live with them? When I was in university, I had roommates for the first few years. They were good friends of mine. And what do most people say about rooming with your friends? “Don’t room with your friends if you want them to stay your friends.” And sure enough, I ran into problems and in one case almost lost a good friend as a result. So what ended up helping? When I lived on my own, I got along better with all my friends.
So why don’t we apply this to marriage? If spouses didn’t live together, they’d likely get along better. They’d have their own space, and because they didn’t live together, they would not get tired of each other and they’d want to be together. Basically, you’d be maintaining a state of never having what you want, and therefore, continuing to want it.
You’d also avoid stupid little disputes about how to load a dishwasher or how to hang towels. And your little annoying habits wouldn’t be much of an issue, either.
An issue that does come up, however, is when you have children. Well, there are a number of ways to solve this. Having separate dwellings could work but it might be a pain. I propose to purchase a duplex…one that is side-by-side. One side belongs to one spouse, the other side belongs to the other spouse. Since you both own the duplex, you can do whatever you want with it. So I would take out a wall (in my mind, I picture a two-story side-by-side…doesn’t even have to be that big). Then you have a big family room, but in principal you still have your side, and your spouse has the other. You still arrange things in your half the way you want. After all, it’s still your space.
So that takes care of a number of problems right there. But there’s still the problem with becoming overly comfortable in a lifelong contract.
Again, a lifelong contract has the problem of making you lazy. You no longer have the fear (or as much fear) that you could lose the one you’re with. So you take the one you’re with for granted. And you start to take less care of your body as well. Granted, merely being physically attractive is not important. I don’t mean this in a superficial way. But not taking care of your body is definitely an adverse response to the comfort of having someone for life.
A lifelong contract also poses a problem going into marriage, making it one the most stressful things you can do in life. That just doesn’t seem right to me. Who can possibly know who they want to be with for the rest of their life? Why should anyone be forced to make such an unrealistic decision? We are always growing and changing. Just like when you date someone, you eventually change, grow apart, etc. like I’ve mentioned in previous posts.
And there is, again, the problem with not appreciating what you have when you know you’re going to have it forever.
I propose shorter, renewable contracts. Broken into more manageable lengths of time. This will accomplish three things. 1.) It will make marriage less frightening to get into, 2.) It will bring back the fear that you could lose the one you’re with, causing you not to get lazy and take them for granted, and 3.) You don’t have to make the unreasonable choice of choosing who you’ll be with for the rest of your life.
(Note: I would propose the length of the contracts be lengthened effective immediately when children come into the picture, but only until a certain age, like, 18 or something.)
Finally, the expectation of marriage. To be honest, I’m really unclear on this matter. I’ve asked married couples why they decided to get married, but I get all kinds of answers. My thinking is that it would be to start a family. Other than that, I just can’t understand why anyone would want to get married and I suspect most people don’t really consider what they’re getting themselves into.
But I think the main problem is the expectation that you’ll be happy with one person for the rest of your life and that they will be everything you need. If it didn’t happen with other relationships you were in, there’s no reason things will be any different with your spouse.
As far as how to resolve issues of other people coming into your life while you are married…mmm, I think this part of my proposal could get controversial. So I may leave it alone for now. But at any rate, all you’d have to do is make it to the end of your current contract whereupon you could make changes.
I think this is all I’ll put down for now. I’ll post this again over time as I make changes to it. For example, I’ll start to consider the lengths of the contracts.
I’ll add this as a final thought. Many people would suggest to me that learning to live together and getting past differences helps you learn to compromise and grow. But I think compromising and learning to get along causes people to become tired and apathetic.
The method to my madness
The ideas were flowing through my mind last night (er, this morning at around 2:30 AM) as to what I would write in this entry. Now they’re gone. This is another reason I don’t like writing. I often forget what I wanted to say. I’ve mentioned this before. In fact, come to think of it, I’m realizing that my recent entries are just repeating stuff I’ve said before. Not all of it, but, enough.
I think I was going to write about the thought process I went through that led me to travel and live overseas on my own in the first place and give some insight as to why I’m still single. I think some people are wondering. The latter is a bit more difficult to answer, but I can say that since the days of my last one or two years in university, it’s been a pretty conscience decision.
In this entry, I can pretty much kill two birds with one stone, answering both things in one, linear story. The question is, will I be telling the truth, or just justifying my actions with excuses. Well, if it’s not the truth, then this is what I fooled myself into believing was the truth.
So, like, in university I attended a lot of biology seminars (I was a bio major as you know, or can see in my profile). And at one seminar, a guy was talking about some research he was doing on, well, some sort of songbird. In fact, I think it may have been a song sparrow. He was comparing variations in songs individual males used to attract females and the mating success.
By the way, this has nothing to with answering why I’m single. I only mention it because I thought the research was interesting.
But what did have a profound effect on my thinking towards relationships, specifically marriage, was what he said at the end of his presentation. Someone asked a question about…well, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but something that would have required more research to answer…something that was within the speaker’s grasp had he continued to work on that project. But he answered that he hadn’t continued with the project because he got married and couldn’t spend that much time in the field anymore. That’s what hit me.
Now mind you, I don’t think he was using that as an excuse or that he regretted not continuing. But to me, I thought, “What a waste. Here he was doing this work that few people, if any, were doing, and he gave it up to do something that everyone does.” That was a turning point for me.
Well, I guess I need to give a bit more information. That by itself couldn’t have been a turning point if I wasn’t already losing faith in relationships. So let me go back a bit. I know I said this would be a linear story, but come on, you’ve read my posts before.
Ok, so like, from jr. high to high school…well, wait. No before that. My parents told me I should never go steady (I know. No one says steady. Whatever, ‘go out’) with anyone when you’re young (ie: jr. high/high school). As it was, in jr. high and in high school, I never saw much point to it. I watched other relationships. The same thing kept happening over and over again. Two people were attracted to each other, they went out, got tired of each other, then broke up. It didn’t matter how long they lasted, a month, a year, a few years…it all ended the same. So what was the point?
Still, though, I became interested in girls along the way. By around university, I kinda thought, ‘well, I’m young, but not that young. Other people are going out. People even get married when they’re college age.’ But I don’t know. Nothing really worked out.
Towards my remaining years in university, leading up to the above mentioned seminar, I just gave up, realizing I was wasting my time. Better to do something that I wanted than to chase after nothing. I was really busy in those last years of university anyway. ‘Last year’…hell, I was busy for all the years. Anyway, I just focused on my studies because I wanted to make it out alive.
But going back to that seminar, when that guy couldn’t (or didn’t) continue his research because of marriage, to me that equated to marriage being the end of a person’s dreams. I considered that I might be able to accomplish more with my life if I stayed single.
There was another important factor, too. The fact that all my life it’s taken me on average, twice as long to do something as others (from tying my shoes to taking exams). I figured I’m not going to be able to do everything I want in my life, so I’m going to have to choose some things and not others. I decided to be happy with being single and do what I could during that time. And I guess that pretty much sets the stage (and answers the second question: why I’m single).
So, why did I decide to live overseas? Well, part of it was because I decided that as long as I was single, it would be easier to travel. There was no one to question me or keep me in the US.
Hmm, you know, surprisingly this is the more difficult question. I thought the other one would be. But the traveling thing has really evolved between my decision to go to Japan and where I am now. I don’t just mean ‘now’ as in I’m in Taiwan now. I mean as in where I am in my feeling about traveling and living overseas. Because I think I mentioned in the second epiphany entry in Season 1, whatever got the ball rolling more than four years ago is slowing down.
In fact, I don’t think I’m even going to answer that first question, at least not the long version. How much do I need to say?
I traveled to Japan because I’d studied Japanese for three years in high school. I wanted to learn the language better by living in the culture (a linguistics class I took in university inspired me as well as a former student of my high school Japanese teacher).
I was tired of the usual thing in America; graduate, get a job, get married, get a family (I think I already discussed this above). I wanted to live day to day in another culture, not as a tourist.
That was Japan.
Taiwan was quite different. And I’ve probably already addressed why I’m here in Season 1 (beyond just wanting to see my Japanese students graduate). But I can’t remember if I mentioned everything, and one reason I came to Taiwan was because when I returned to America from Japan, I missed living the less than ordinary life. But certainly, you can never recapture that feeling of visiting another country for the first time. Still, I’m glad I’m here, but as I told my co-worker in Singapore, it’s losing its novelty. And to tie this in with my realization from that biology seminar, I’m not so sure I’m actually accomplishing more as a single person than a married person or someone in a relationship. And, yeah. I’ll end it there.
I think I was going to write about the thought process I went through that led me to travel and live overseas on my own in the first place and give some insight as to why I’m still single. I think some people are wondering. The latter is a bit more difficult to answer, but I can say that since the days of my last one or two years in university, it’s been a pretty conscience decision.
In this entry, I can pretty much kill two birds with one stone, answering both things in one, linear story. The question is, will I be telling the truth, or just justifying my actions with excuses. Well, if it’s not the truth, then this is what I fooled myself into believing was the truth.
So, like, in university I attended a lot of biology seminars (I was a bio major as you know, or can see in my profile). And at one seminar, a guy was talking about some research he was doing on, well, some sort of songbird. In fact, I think it may have been a song sparrow. He was comparing variations in songs individual males used to attract females and the mating success.
By the way, this has nothing to with answering why I’m single. I only mention it because I thought the research was interesting.
But what did have a profound effect on my thinking towards relationships, specifically marriage, was what he said at the end of his presentation. Someone asked a question about…well, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but something that would have required more research to answer…something that was within the speaker’s grasp had he continued to work on that project. But he answered that he hadn’t continued with the project because he got married and couldn’t spend that much time in the field anymore. That’s what hit me.
Now mind you, I don’t think he was using that as an excuse or that he regretted not continuing. But to me, I thought, “What a waste. Here he was doing this work that few people, if any, were doing, and he gave it up to do something that everyone does.” That was a turning point for me.
Well, I guess I need to give a bit more information. That by itself couldn’t have been a turning point if I wasn’t already losing faith in relationships. So let me go back a bit. I know I said this would be a linear story, but come on, you’ve read my posts before.
Ok, so like, from jr. high to high school…well, wait. No before that. My parents told me I should never go steady (I know. No one says steady. Whatever, ‘go out’) with anyone when you’re young (ie: jr. high/high school). As it was, in jr. high and in high school, I never saw much point to it. I watched other relationships. The same thing kept happening over and over again. Two people were attracted to each other, they went out, got tired of each other, then broke up. It didn’t matter how long they lasted, a month, a year, a few years…it all ended the same. So what was the point?
Still, though, I became interested in girls along the way. By around university, I kinda thought, ‘well, I’m young, but not that young. Other people are going out. People even get married when they’re college age.’ But I don’t know. Nothing really worked out.
Towards my remaining years in university, leading up to the above mentioned seminar, I just gave up, realizing I was wasting my time. Better to do something that I wanted than to chase after nothing. I was really busy in those last years of university anyway. ‘Last year’…hell, I was busy for all the years. Anyway, I just focused on my studies because I wanted to make it out alive.
But going back to that seminar, when that guy couldn’t (or didn’t) continue his research because of marriage, to me that equated to marriage being the end of a person’s dreams. I considered that I might be able to accomplish more with my life if I stayed single.
There was another important factor, too. The fact that all my life it’s taken me on average, twice as long to do something as others (from tying my shoes to taking exams). I figured I’m not going to be able to do everything I want in my life, so I’m going to have to choose some things and not others. I decided to be happy with being single and do what I could during that time. And I guess that pretty much sets the stage (and answers the second question: why I’m single).
So, why did I decide to live overseas? Well, part of it was because I decided that as long as I was single, it would be easier to travel. There was no one to question me or keep me in the US.
Hmm, you know, surprisingly this is the more difficult question. I thought the other one would be. But the traveling thing has really evolved between my decision to go to Japan and where I am now. I don’t just mean ‘now’ as in I’m in Taiwan now. I mean as in where I am in my feeling about traveling and living overseas. Because I think I mentioned in the second epiphany entry in Season 1, whatever got the ball rolling more than four years ago is slowing down.
In fact, I don’t think I’m even going to answer that first question, at least not the long version. How much do I need to say?
I traveled to Japan because I’d studied Japanese for three years in high school. I wanted to learn the language better by living in the culture (a linguistics class I took in university inspired me as well as a former student of my high school Japanese teacher).
I was tired of the usual thing in America; graduate, get a job, get married, get a family (I think I already discussed this above). I wanted to live day to day in another culture, not as a tourist.
That was Japan.
Taiwan was quite different. And I’ve probably already addressed why I’m here in Season 1 (beyond just wanting to see my Japanese students graduate). But I can’t remember if I mentioned everything, and one reason I came to Taiwan was because when I returned to America from Japan, I missed living the less than ordinary life. But certainly, you can never recapture that feeling of visiting another country for the first time. Still, I’m glad I’m here, but as I told my co-worker in Singapore, it’s losing its novelty. And to tie this in with my realization from that biology seminar, I’m not so sure I’m actually accomplishing more as a single person than a married person or someone in a relationship. And, yeah. I’ll end it there.
Epiphany #3
So this is it. The long awaited third epiphany. Don’t want to build it up too much, but this is the one that ties the first two together.
The first two, I had in Singapore and they were written about in Season 1. The first was described in Killdeer vs. the Crab, where I recognized I needed someone.
The second happened two days later. I talked about it in The JET Afterlife. That’s a long entry so I’ll summarize. It was concerning time. It bothered me that people would be passive and let time and distance separate them and lose contact. I decided to try and overcome this by keeping myself in a position where I could travel anywhere to see the people that mean the most to me.
While I was able to overcome the distance, I couldn’t fight the effects of time. It wasn’t enough to cover the distance. The separation could still occur.
Putting the two together.
In my recent posts I described a rock I couldn’t move and the life-changing event. Those two things happened at the same time, as a result of one person. A loss that I couldn’t cope with for a long time. It knocked me to the ground and took the wind out of me…or I guess I described it as being submerged.
I used to be cynical in order to cope with these matters. Who cares? There will always be someone else. Nothing lasts forever, so why bother? And that would be a reason never to get attached to one person. And I was never after any short-term gain, so I couldn’t do anything frivolous or meaningless.
So how do I cope in a more positive way?
It just hit me today. And it may not be profound to some of you. And, really, I’ve heard it before, but sometimes something that is said can have a very different meaning depending on the attitude you have when you hear (or read) it. Here it is.
There’s going to be more than one right person for you in your life. So it’s not enough to simply find the right person. It has to also be the right time.
The best another right person you meet at the wrong time can be is a friend. Unless there’s value in something short-term. (I guess it depends on how you see things. I’m trying to see value in short-term things, mainly the present, as the past and the future are quite long, but I’m more interested in long-term gain.) Or unless you’re going to make a change in your life and go in a new direction.
The rest of your life is a long road. Best to pull over from time to time to make sure you’re still headed in the direction you want (or wanted) to go. I still reject the idea floating down a river, going with the flow. But I can see (better now) that there are things I can’t control.
The first two, I had in Singapore and they were written about in Season 1. The first was described in Killdeer vs. the Crab, where I recognized I needed someone.
The second happened two days later. I talked about it in The JET Afterlife. That’s a long entry so I’ll summarize. It was concerning time. It bothered me that people would be passive and let time and distance separate them and lose contact. I decided to try and overcome this by keeping myself in a position where I could travel anywhere to see the people that mean the most to me.
While I was able to overcome the distance, I couldn’t fight the effects of time. It wasn’t enough to cover the distance. The separation could still occur.
Putting the two together.
In my recent posts I described a rock I couldn’t move and the life-changing event. Those two things happened at the same time, as a result of one person. A loss that I couldn’t cope with for a long time. It knocked me to the ground and took the wind out of me…or I guess I described it as being submerged.
I used to be cynical in order to cope with these matters. Who cares? There will always be someone else. Nothing lasts forever, so why bother? And that would be a reason never to get attached to one person. And I was never after any short-term gain, so I couldn’t do anything frivolous or meaningless.
So how do I cope in a more positive way?
It just hit me today. And it may not be profound to some of you. And, really, I’ve heard it before, but sometimes something that is said can have a very different meaning depending on the attitude you have when you hear (or read) it. Here it is.
There’s going to be more than one right person for you in your life. So it’s not enough to simply find the right person. It has to also be the right time.
The best another right person you meet at the wrong time can be is a friend. Unless there’s value in something short-term. (I guess it depends on how you see things. I’m trying to see value in short-term things, mainly the present, as the past and the future are quite long, but I’m more interested in long-term gain.) Or unless you’re going to make a change in your life and go in a new direction.
The rest of your life is a long road. Best to pull over from time to time to make sure you’re still headed in the direction you want (or wanted) to go. I still reject the idea floating down a river, going with the flow. But I can see (better now) that there are things I can’t control.
Epiphany #2: The JET Afterlife
“What is it about this JET experience that makes people think it’s the best thing they’ve ever had, that makes them wish they were back even though when they were there, they couldn’t wait to leave?”
Well, I keep going back and forth over which entry I’m going to write next, but I’ve chosen to write about the second epiphany. I’ll write about the zoo next time. It may be more relevant to ex-JETS, but I’m sure there are some parallels that can apply to anyone.
I’m not sure how this will go. In some respects, this will be easier to write about than the first epiphany because it’s less personal. On the other hand, this one has more tangents and it keeps evolving. So it could be more difficult to write about. I’ll try to stick to main ideas, but just know that there will probably be a lot more to it than what I write and that this epiphany is more subject to change…as this one has to do with time.
I won’t go into detail about my time in Singapore for this entry. But a quick timeline: I was in Singapore from Saturday afternoon to Tuesday morning. I already talked about Saturday in my last entry. Now, I’m skipping a bit to Monday evening.
Monday evening, I met with my JET co-worker from my first year. I wasn’t entirely sure what we’d talk about. We never really got along well in Japan. But still, meeting her was what got me curious about Singapore in the first place. And when was I going to be there again? So of course, I wanted to meet with her.
Originally, the plan was to meet for dinner, but she ended up working late, so we just had a drink and chatted.
My uncle once said that people mostly talk about two things, the past and the future…not the present. In knowing this, I often try to avoid talking about the past and future too much. (But you know, my thinking is, the present is a pretty small portion of our lives. The past and the future make up a greater portion of our lives, which gives more things to talk about. But I think his point was that people either live in the past or the future instead of living in the present. Maybe I’ll comment more on this at the end.)
Anyway, I try to keep things in balance. However, the one thing my co-worker and I had in common was that we had lived and worked at the same school in Japan. So, naturally, we talked about that. Actually, she was the first ex-JET I’ve met with in person since I, myself, left the program. So it was nice to be able to talk about the experience.
But we talked about JET a bit more than I thought we would. She’d left the program a year before me, so it’s been about two and a half years since she left. I figured it would be a small part of our discussion. I mainly wanted to catch up with her. And since we didn’t have much in common, I was glad we were having a drink instead of dinner, for fear of running out of things to talk about. But she’s the one who took the conversation in that direction. She did most of the talking that night. And it got me wondering…
What is it about this JET experience that makes people think it’s the best thing they’ve ever had, that makes them wish they were back even though when they were there, they couldn’t wait to leave?
Perhaps I’m putting words in people’s mouths. However, the general feeling is that ex-JETs miss the program when they leave. Though, maybe it’s not just JET. After all, most things are better looking back than they were at the time. But this seems different. I don’t know. I don’t have time to summarize what made JET such a good experience. Maybe…well, wait. Let me say this first.
Going back to the subject at hand. So things are better looking back than they were at the time. People also say you only remember the good times. But the thing is, I haven’t found that to be the case. Maybe something’s wrong with me, but I remember everything…the good and the bad. I remember the bad just as much as (sometimes more than) the good. I realize JET was wonderful, and there are things I miss about Japan, but even in hindsight, I don’t, for a second, wish I’d stayed a third year. (I protest, too much. I must be lying.) Ok, maybe, if I could have put up with the nonsense for another year, it would have been nice to have stayed. But I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it. I think the only way to appreciate JET is to leave it. You just can’t understand what you have til it’s gone. And if you know what you have, then you want to hang on to it all the more (in which case, great. Stay the three years).
Well, neither of these were the epiphany, but like I said, I realized a lot of things from this trip. I just rambled a bit. Sorry, sorry. I just get a bit carried away sometimes. So, um, right. The epiphany….I can’t remember what it was now. Crap. Something about time.
Ok, after I had met with my co-worker, I kind of felt it was a bad thing to have talked so much about JET (the past). She had been out of the program longer, so what good was it for me to remind her of a time that was over? I think that was it. That was the epiphany. (Or extrapolate that to the bigger picture, and that is the epiphany.) But I emphasize “was the epiphany”.
At first I thought it was bad to have brought back memories of a time that was over, but like I said earlier, it wasn’t all bad. I said it was nice…at least for me. I wasn’t sure about for her. I wrote an email thanking her for meeting with me and that I enjoyed reminiscing about the JET Program. I didn’t figure she’d respond to it, so I held on to the above epiphany. However, she did respond saying that she enjoyed catching up and talking about JET, in which case, the epiphany is null and void.
The danger of writing an epiphany of time (or anything I write with some air of finality) is that it’s subject to change with time.
Well, that’s the meat of what I have to write. I’ll close with some offshoots of the epiphany. But if you need to take a break…use the restroom or get a glass of water, you may do so now. I’ll mark your place right here.
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How well, did I get over JET? I lasted six months in the US before I came running back overseas. And why am I here in Taiwan? To experience something new? Or an attempt to recapture something I lost when I left JET. Taiwan is becoming more and more a base of operation for my objective in Japan, primarily to see my students graduate high school. That’s not to say that it’s a waste, but if I’m only here for Japan, aren’t living in the past?
It remains to be seen whether attending the graduation will be worth it. Will it be too late? Will it mean as much to me as I had hoped when I’m freezing in that gym? Will it mean anything to the students? Or will it be pathetic that an old teacher had nothing better to do than return to a school he hasn’t worked at for nearly two years? Well, as I mentioned in an entry a long time ago, one of the things I learned when I left Japan, you can’t be passive about it. You have to decide whether or not an experience is going to be good or bad. Don’t wait until it’s gone (counter to what I wrote above).
Well, I keep going back and forth over which entry I’m going to write next, but I’ve chosen to write about the second epiphany. I’ll write about the zoo next time. It may be more relevant to ex-JETS, but I’m sure there are some parallels that can apply to anyone.
I’m not sure how this will go. In some respects, this will be easier to write about than the first epiphany because it’s less personal. On the other hand, this one has more tangents and it keeps evolving. So it could be more difficult to write about. I’ll try to stick to main ideas, but just know that there will probably be a lot more to it than what I write and that this epiphany is more subject to change…as this one has to do with time.
I won’t go into detail about my time in Singapore for this entry. But a quick timeline: I was in Singapore from Saturday afternoon to Tuesday morning. I already talked about Saturday in my last entry. Now, I’m skipping a bit to Monday evening.
Monday evening, I met with my JET co-worker from my first year. I wasn’t entirely sure what we’d talk about. We never really got along well in Japan. But still, meeting her was what got me curious about Singapore in the first place. And when was I going to be there again? So of course, I wanted to meet with her.
Originally, the plan was to meet for dinner, but she ended up working late, so we just had a drink and chatted.
My uncle once said that people mostly talk about two things, the past and the future…not the present. In knowing this, I often try to avoid talking about the past and future too much. (But you know, my thinking is, the present is a pretty small portion of our lives. The past and the future make up a greater portion of our lives, which gives more things to talk about. But I think his point was that people either live in the past or the future instead of living in the present. Maybe I’ll comment more on this at the end.)
Anyway, I try to keep things in balance. However, the one thing my co-worker and I had in common was that we had lived and worked at the same school in Japan. So, naturally, we talked about that. Actually, she was the first ex-JET I’ve met with in person since I, myself, left the program. So it was nice to be able to talk about the experience.
But we talked about JET a bit more than I thought we would. She’d left the program a year before me, so it’s been about two and a half years since she left. I figured it would be a small part of our discussion. I mainly wanted to catch up with her. And since we didn’t have much in common, I was glad we were having a drink instead of dinner, for fear of running out of things to talk about. But she’s the one who took the conversation in that direction. She did most of the talking that night. And it got me wondering…
What is it about this JET experience that makes people think it’s the best thing they’ve ever had, that makes them wish they were back even though when they were there, they couldn’t wait to leave?
Perhaps I’m putting words in people’s mouths. However, the general feeling is that ex-JETs miss the program when they leave. Though, maybe it’s not just JET. After all, most things are better looking back than they were at the time. But this seems different. I don’t know. I don’t have time to summarize what made JET such a good experience. Maybe…well, wait. Let me say this first.
Going back to the subject at hand. So things are better looking back than they were at the time. People also say you only remember the good times. But the thing is, I haven’t found that to be the case. Maybe something’s wrong with me, but I remember everything…the good and the bad. I remember the bad just as much as (sometimes more than) the good. I realize JET was wonderful, and there are things I miss about Japan, but even in hindsight, I don’t, for a second, wish I’d stayed a third year. (I protest, too much. I must be lying.) Ok, maybe, if I could have put up with the nonsense for another year, it would have been nice to have stayed. But I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it. I think the only way to appreciate JET is to leave it. You just can’t understand what you have til it’s gone. And if you know what you have, then you want to hang on to it all the more (in which case, great. Stay the three years).
Well, neither of these were the epiphany, but like I said, I realized a lot of things from this trip. I just rambled a bit. Sorry, sorry. I just get a bit carried away sometimes. So, um, right. The epiphany….I can’t remember what it was now. Crap. Something about time.
Ok, after I had met with my co-worker, I kind of felt it was a bad thing to have talked so much about JET (the past). She had been out of the program longer, so what good was it for me to remind her of a time that was over? I think that was it. That was the epiphany. (Or extrapolate that to the bigger picture, and that is the epiphany.) But I emphasize “was the epiphany”.
At first I thought it was bad to have brought back memories of a time that was over, but like I said earlier, it wasn’t all bad. I said it was nice…at least for me. I wasn’t sure about for her. I wrote an email thanking her for meeting with me and that I enjoyed reminiscing about the JET Program. I didn’t figure she’d respond to it, so I held on to the above epiphany. However, she did respond saying that she enjoyed catching up and talking about JET, in which case, the epiphany is null and void.
The danger of writing an epiphany of time (or anything I write with some air of finality) is that it’s subject to change with time.
Well, that’s the meat of what I have to write. I’ll close with some offshoots of the epiphany. But if you need to take a break…use the restroom or get a glass of water, you may do so now. I’ll mark your place right here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How well, did I get over JET? I lasted six months in the US before I came running back overseas. And why am I here in Taiwan? To experience something new? Or an attempt to recapture something I lost when I left JET. Taiwan is becoming more and more a base of operation for my objective in Japan, primarily to see my students graduate high school. That’s not to say that it’s a waste, but if I’m only here for Japan, aren’t living in the past?
It remains to be seen whether attending the graduation will be worth it. Will it be too late? Will it mean as much to me as I had hoped when I’m freezing in that gym? Will it mean anything to the students? Or will it be pathetic that an old teacher had nothing better to do than return to a school he hasn’t worked at for nearly two years? Well, as I mentioned in an entry a long time ago, one of the things I learned when I left Japan, you can’t be passive about it. You have to decide whether or not an experience is going to be good or bad. Don’t wait until it’s gone (counter to what I wrote above).
Sunday
Epiphany #1: Killdeer vs. the Crab (or What the Crab Taught Me).
A worthy adversary, this crab.
I guess I should write this sometime. The problem is, my trip to Singapore was a while ago now, so the details of the events surrounding the epiphanies are fading from my memory. But maybe that will help me get to the point more quickly. (Yeah, right.)
So the first day in Singapore was great. After arriving at the airport, I took a shuttle van to my hotel. It was cheaper than a taxi and easier than transferring two times on the MRT (subway). Plus it allowed me to talk with other passengers. As it turned out, everyone on the shuttle was in Singapore for the first time. Two were from Zimbabwe, two from Israel, and two from California (though not originally, I don’t think). So it was kind of fun to talk with them.
Got to my hotel around 2 PM, dropped off my stuff in my room, and went out to find a late lunch. Around the corner was a nice courtyard to a very fancy hotel (or perhaps a timeshare property) with various food establishments. Most of them seemed closed, but there was an Italian place open, so I had a margarita pizza.
With food in my stomach, I was now ready to look around.
My hotel was by Singapore River, which I followed out to Merlion Park (pictured two posts ago). Along the way, were some cool-looking buildings and a lot of restaurants (which I bookmarked in my mind for later. I always plan my day around food.) Also saw signs for events that would be happening that evening, like an Octoberfest, and a number of concerts along the river. All these events were happening later in the evening, so I continued to walk and look around for the next few hours.
I know, you’re waiting for the epiphany. But that didn’t happen til dinnertime. And I have to set it up first. I have to tell you how well the day was going first, before I tell you how it suddenly turned miserable.
But first, let me say this. One of the things I enjoyed about my experience in Japan is that I went there by myself. When you go places and do things by yourself, you don’t have to agree with anyone on anything. You just do what you want. I like that. I’m not a very flexible person anyway. Though, I am incredibly patient. And the two compliment each other nicely. People have criticized me for being inflexible, but I would argue that when you are inflexible (or uncompromising) and you have patience, you’re going to outlast anyone or anything that stands between you and what you want.
But inflexibility and doing things/going places on your own has its setbacks, too…
So, it was getting late. I started to follow the river back in the direction of my hotel and looked for a place to have dinner. I came across an outdoor seafood restaurant that sat on the river and decided to eat there.
I was pretty hungry, so I had a hard time deciding what I wanted. The stingray sounded interesting, but it looked too similar to a steak (the menu had pictures). I was recommended the crab. Sounded good. I hadn’t had crab in a long time…and I soon remembered why.
What followed was most enduring, painstaking process I’d ever gone through to acquire food. The amount of work that went into breaking this crab apart was not worth the small amount of meat I extracted from the shell. And the thing was covered with oil and garlic, which was tasty, mind you, but it made the process more miserable (I hate getting my hands messy).
But I’m a patient person. So I worked at it. However, when I looked a big clock across the river, I realized that I’d been at this for nearly two hours…and I was still hungry. I became frustrated. And that’s when it hit me.
I can’t do everything by myself. All the power I felt from having control of everything…being able to do anything I want whenever I want…seemed meaningless now.
But that wasn’t the epiphany. It had nothing to do with the crab or me needing help to eat it. Or if it was, it was only part of the bigger picture.
I needed someone.
I wanted nothing more than for there to be someone on the other side of my table. People have told me this before, but I’d rationalize my position. But when a dead crab on your plate reveals this to you, it’s hard to argue with it. But I’m pretty sure I already knew it before the crab even came. The novelty of doing anything I want and going anywhere I want is wearing off.
When I finished my dinner, I had eaten most of the crab. But it had won. I tried going to those other events mentioned earlier, but they were ending by the time I got there. It seemed time had a bit of a victory over me, too. I walked home defeated. And so ended my first day in Singapore.
But thankfully, it did not ruin the rest of my trip. And, really, it hadn’t ruined that day, either. I’m glad it happened. The next day, I went to the Singapore Zoo (perhaps I’ll write that entry next). Then the day after that, I had a second epiphany.
I guess I should write this sometime. The problem is, my trip to Singapore was a while ago now, so the details of the events surrounding the epiphanies are fading from my memory. But maybe that will help me get to the point more quickly. (Yeah, right.)
So the first day in Singapore was great. After arriving at the airport, I took a shuttle van to my hotel. It was cheaper than a taxi and easier than transferring two times on the MRT (subway). Plus it allowed me to talk with other passengers. As it turned out, everyone on the shuttle was in Singapore for the first time. Two were from Zimbabwe, two from Israel, and two from California (though not originally, I don’t think). So it was kind of fun to talk with them.
Got to my hotel around 2 PM, dropped off my stuff in my room, and went out to find a late lunch. Around the corner was a nice courtyard to a very fancy hotel (or perhaps a timeshare property) with various food establishments. Most of them seemed closed, but there was an Italian place open, so I had a margarita pizza.
With food in my stomach, I was now ready to look around.
My hotel was by Singapore River, which I followed out to Merlion Park (pictured two posts ago). Along the way, were some cool-looking buildings and a lot of restaurants (which I bookmarked in my mind for later. I always plan my day around food.) Also saw signs for events that would be happening that evening, like an Octoberfest, and a number of concerts along the river. All these events were happening later in the evening, so I continued to walk and look around for the next few hours.
I know, you’re waiting for the epiphany. But that didn’t happen til dinnertime. And I have to set it up first. I have to tell you how well the day was going first, before I tell you how it suddenly turned miserable.
But first, let me say this. One of the things I enjoyed about my experience in Japan is that I went there by myself. When you go places and do things by yourself, you don’t have to agree with anyone on anything. You just do what you want. I like that. I’m not a very flexible person anyway. Though, I am incredibly patient. And the two compliment each other nicely. People have criticized me for being inflexible, but I would argue that when you are inflexible (or uncompromising) and you have patience, you’re going to outlast anyone or anything that stands between you and what you want.
But inflexibility and doing things/going places on your own has its setbacks, too…
So, it was getting late. I started to follow the river back in the direction of my hotel and looked for a place to have dinner. I came across an outdoor seafood restaurant that sat on the river and decided to eat there.
I was pretty hungry, so I had a hard time deciding what I wanted. The stingray sounded interesting, but it looked too similar to a steak (the menu had pictures). I was recommended the crab. Sounded good. I hadn’t had crab in a long time…and I soon remembered why.
What followed was most enduring, painstaking process I’d ever gone through to acquire food. The amount of work that went into breaking this crab apart was not worth the small amount of meat I extracted from the shell. And the thing was covered with oil and garlic, which was tasty, mind you, but it made the process more miserable (I hate getting my hands messy).
But I’m a patient person. So I worked at it. However, when I looked a big clock across the river, I realized that I’d been at this for nearly two hours…and I was still hungry. I became frustrated. And that’s when it hit me.
I can’t do everything by myself. All the power I felt from having control of everything…being able to do anything I want whenever I want…seemed meaningless now.
But that wasn’t the epiphany. It had nothing to do with the crab or me needing help to eat it. Or if it was, it was only part of the bigger picture.
I needed someone.
I wanted nothing more than for there to be someone on the other side of my table. People have told me this before, but I’d rationalize my position. But when a dead crab on your plate reveals this to you, it’s hard to argue with it. But I’m pretty sure I already knew it before the crab even came. The novelty of doing anything I want and going anywhere I want is wearing off.
When I finished my dinner, I had eaten most of the crab. But it had won. I tried going to those other events mentioned earlier, but they were ending by the time I got there. It seemed time had a bit of a victory over me, too. I walked home defeated. And so ended my first day in Singapore.
But thankfully, it did not ruin the rest of my trip. And, really, it hadn’t ruined that day, either. I’m glad it happened. The next day, I went to the Singapore Zoo (perhaps I’ll write that entry next). Then the day after that, I had a second epiphany.
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