Who we are, where and when

Feeling out of place is something i grew up with, so ironically that has become a feeling i’m quite at home with. The good thing about it is that you care less and less about it along the way. It doesn’t mean you stop trying to talk to people and get to know them; it just means that when that’s not reciprocated you don’t have to cry in the shower or in bed anymore.

Another good thing about it is you learn to tell very quickly whether someone is interested in getting to know you better or not at all. Since i got here, i must have said hello and had some kind of a short, introductory conversation with at least 150 people. I might have about 10 phone numbers, and maybe 5 of them on facebook (or maybe the other way round). But really, the people who made me feel like they actually meant to get to know me? 2. These are also the two who make me feel both proud to be Singaporean as well as curious about where they are from and how they grew up. Because at the end of the day, by the time we get to talk about our family and the people we love best, we realise that we are all really very much the same.  It’s also strange because each of us has felt out of place at some point or other in our lives prior to this, and though we’re so different in many ways, there is a point of connection that reminds us that we are not alone.

I guess it is this connection that we seek constantly. And perhaps we are wired to do that. When i used to find a connection like this, i thought i have found my best friend for life, and i pounce on that poor sod who usually hastily retreats and disappears from the face of my life. Then i thought i might have mistaken kindness for connection, and then i get sad, and the whole emotional cycle begins again. By now i realise that, perhaps, that moment of connection is the point. Not the person, not the possibility of a lifelong friendship, not the debilitating premature commitment of belonging to somebody again. The moment comes and then it goes; something in each of us is lit, and then it grows. But we are then free to move on with our respective life trajectories, propelled by that growing warmth of having connected with somebody.

It is much less tiring that way too, i guess. Of course there are some who do become lifelong friends, but even if they don’t, it is okay. The best thing about growing older is discovering just how many things are really okay. Like how, no matter what changes there are in the environment, we are still gonna do what we do in the way we usually do it.

And yet part of the being away is to see just what happens to a person when taken out of his/her usual context. Many people have told me that my disinterest in travel and general inertia will change once i get to London. I’ve also heard that everyone who has ever lived in London returns home with his/her life changed forever. I’m not sure how it will be with me yet. Part of me fears that i will some day see beauty only in the distance, and no longer cherish the beauty of my newfound home. And discontentment is such an insidious poison, and irreversible. Part of me also thinks that maybe i’m too old, too inert, too jaded to be changed. But most of me realises that change is something that happens while one is not overthinking. 😀

Meanwhile i was also thinking about this process of writing more so that energy is expended in creating something…and it struck me that the more i create (to use the word ridiculously loosely), the more i find a desire to read more, absorb more, learn more. So there has to be an active output for the input to be meaningful and continuous. Which kinda makes sense. And my work experience also reinforces that. Which is also kinda like the way our lungs absorb oxygen: somewhere in the recesses of my addled brain is a Biology lesson that described how it is the presence of carbon dioxide that triggers the breathing process and the absorption of oxygen. It takes a lack to inspire a quest. So while we often practise receptive processes before productive ones, perhaps there is also value in jump-starting a productive process so that there is motivation to practise the receptive skills?