Judge Dee at work

The patient

I did not know this patient for long, but there used to be a time he was well versed, witty, and warm and engaging. He loved his books, and loved talking about his books, and, though knowing his end was near, still had future oriented plans and looked forward to going home from the hospital so he could have a read of his Robert van Gulik collections again.
He saw my eyes lit up at the mention of that name, and he was surprised I knew about old-school Judge Dee and could rattle off all the story plots on top of my head. I managed to be good enough to a lovely dying elderly gentleman and not get negatively ocpd about the details (that I read them in
Chinese and the Chinese translations were partly re-written by the translators which made them awesome and the English originals were otherwise odd and shallow in their emotionality and to me merely a white man's oriental fantasies blah blah blah... -_-|||||)
Under the guise of psychiatry appointments we had some good conversation about the goodness of Judge Dee common to both the east and west, fantasies or not.
and then i remembered many things myself.

The plum blossoms

Judge Dee and his crew have been around for many years and were more family than family to me, and Judge Dee the eternal wise paternal figure. The fact that he acquired three wives just for a blissful table of mahjong was always something more to giggle about but never affected my respect for him.
Though something soured in this imaginary relationship in recent years, when I became old enough and shrinky enough, and realised what he did to Mrs Kuo the pharmacist's wife in the Chinese Nail Murder.
I think I was fond of the fact how he finally encountered a woman matching him in wit and sophistication, and the mutual chemistry in the air when they were both capable of quick set shifting in conversation topics - from poetic descriptions of plum blossoms to demises of female prisoners then to the feasibility of killing by driving nails into people's nostrils .
and then he acted out, in the name of justice, and emotionally blackmailed her to jump the cliff to her end.
despite the fact that I do really empathize how deep he was in his loneliness, trapped in the rough distant town of Pei-chow. There were many things his blissful mahjong table couldn't deliver, and all made worse by the sudden loss of Sergeant Hoong who had been his fixed point in a changing age ever since he was a child...
I think he killed a part of himself, with her.
I don't know if the fact that I cannot forgive a book character has taken my pathological imaginary friendships to a whole new level, but maybe, just maybe, I was in fact more angry with myself who for many years believed that though painful he really did the right and noble thing in a position of authority and there was no other way out...
I myself may have reached a time in life when I will soon be acquiring and acting in much more authority than what I have now, and I am just dreading, dreading that despite my best efforts not to join the league of some of my very embarrassing ex-bosses, I may not be able to avoid becoming Judge Dee, in a time vulnerable and hard pressed on every side, acting out under a noble guise and making some very very grave mistakes.
and maybe that will be even harder to swallow than a very unfair coroners report, despite of the worst part of it being over, again knocked me out hard and made my bones very dry.
...and made me fearful that whilst carrying such poison to work and having to pretend all is okay... I will act out sooner or later. 


The golden bell

Judge Dee was the father but Tao Gan was my special friend，though I really couldn't understand why he was so special. He was already middle-aged by the first time he appeared, a dry and hunched man, always looked a bit down and out, anxious and pessimistic in nature, many years ago had a wife who ran away from him so a bit of a woman-hater, who tried to be smart but could never outwit Judge Dee...
End of the day, I think Tao Gan reminded me a lot of myself, and validated the part of me that has always been a bit of an anxious loser, who not very decently loved all kinds of depraved goss from the magistrate files and derived so much happiness from them. There was a time he giggled for a whole night by the candlelight reading some perverted scholar's love poems to his step-mother--and the pervert wrote a lot too so there was plenty to enjoy--
I think I can imagine myself doing that, totally.

There was something i really liked about Murder in Canton, the last story in the canon. There wasn't only the tragedy of Chiao Tai's death, and all these wonderful exciting stuff at last coming to an end, but i think it ingeniously ended on a very hopeful note.
It had nothing to do with happiness and satisfaction in the traditional Eastern value sense - with Judge Dee being acknowledged by the empress rising to power and avoiding a fall from imperial favour, or a new son being born out of his blissful mahjong table, or whatever remaining of his crew all getting well deserved promotions...
It ended with Tao Gan, by then approaching his 7th decade in life, and always finding more enjoyment in his solitary and not-very decent hobbies, who was still recovering from the aftermath of a very difficult case, and grieving the loss of his good friend Chiao Tai---
walked up to blind Miss Lan-lee's attic and inviting her to go with him to the capital.
her cricket the Golden Bell chirped, and gave him a fright.

it was such a nice ending, with all its imperfections and traditional dissatisfaction.
So bright and warm and hopeful that i could hardly open my eyes, I would not have wanted Judge Dee to have ended in any other way.
and then I realised, not only me, but the author, and the translators...
no matter how very uncool they have made this guy out to be, they all totally loved Tao Gan too.


The Final Words

My patient knew he was going to die very soon, when the team that has cared for him for many years did not offer him another follow-up. He was walking out the hospital...abandoned, shocked, listless and unkempt when I called and reminded him about his psychiatry appointment.
So he walked back to see me, in his emotional stupor. 
We didn't end up talking much, apart from me calmly reassuring him that I had little to offer in the face of him dying (which perhaps was even worse than non-reassurance) but just in case he wanted to talk about it? He was too overwhelmed to speak the whole time but made great efforts to gesture with his hands reassuring me that he was in fact okay.

End of the day, I knew there was very very little of anything there was left to say, or there was still appropriate to say for that matter.
So what came out was simply, feebly, non-psychiatric:

"Thank you for talking to me about Judge Dee."

BMI envy, Jesus as my supervisor, and no explicit disclaimers in Bibles

Fat City, What can stop Obesity?

My friend Sally posted this on her facebook and I liked it. She is one of those very few people around against whom I have BMI envy. (LOL) The initial liking of her article certainly made me feel very far away from gluttony or stress (or both)- related BMI issues myself too.

though the fact that there were countless days i found it so hard living a human life and only eating comforted but my BMI didn't get elevated (not yet!) as a consequence gave me quite a bit of survivor guilt after reading the whole thing. there are inherent differences between asian and caucasian metabolisms, just as there are inherent differences between male and female hormonal driven needs, and I am always somewhat disdainful towards those who have no insight and sympathy for their more unlucky counterparts. I certainly don't agree with the author's (thank God she is caucasian and not asian!)call to boycott comfort eating on a societal scale with the hope of punishing the obese. Just imagine a pastor in the form of an Asian uncle thin as a stick with a cholesterol reading of 7.4 and who eats a bowl of laksa and five fried chicken wings a day himself without seeing any problem with that now preaching about the newly discovered sin of obesity to his congregation... (画面太美我不敢看……）

at the end of day i am all supportive of easily accessible measures to satisfy people's infantile needs and am frustrated that our very fallen world not only does not offer more of those but is always threatening to take away existing options (eg. hospital wide smoke ban which includes its mental health precinct). as a matter of fact whether we believe in evolution or not infantile needs don't really evolve and if they can't satisfied in one way they seep out in other much more inappropriate forms of manifestation. and my views are but myopic and self-interest driven--anything that can help to keep people out of madhouses (or seeking out CAT team for TLC like drinking poison to quench one's thirst) is a blessing to this world... As the article very appropriately pointed out... "behavioural therapy" will make everyone feel better except the patient himself and hence measures up very, very, very poorly against the much condemned chips and coke.

one of the things I couldn't really get over these days is how rude Jesus actually was to his disciples. If he has been my supervisor I would have filed a formal complaint to the college a long time ago--
Dimissive impatient attitude dealing with underlings' learning needs-- Matt 17:17
Inconsistent and impulsive situation-based performance feedback which lacked objectivity -- Matt 16: 17-19 vs 23
Adverse outcome incident (+/-) Riskman for task failure without adequate prior training-- Matt 14:29

something else bothered me even longer -- despite God knowing the many mad men or women ahead in time will end up chopping off their hands and feet and gouging out their eyeballs in utter madness after reading Matt 18:8-9, He still wanted those words recorded in the Bible in all sincerity.

This is just my personal view but I think in the Christian circle there is a widespread and deep seated myth that if you do Christianity long enough and hard enough and passionate enough you will find the act of faith replacing all other earthly measures in the purpose of infantile needs gratification -- in more appropriate language perhaps "God will satisfy all the desires of your heart".

But whatever name you give it, it probably still wouldn't be a very gratifying experience on a human level.
Despite Jesus so tenderly speak of His Father looking after the sparrows in the air and the hair on your heads and the fact that humans are worth much more than sparrows (we probably all felt rather warm and fuzzy and reassured reading that bit with our own infantile human expectations set up somewhat)---
Matt 18:8-9 has been written in all sincerity and passed on... without any explicit warning that it cannot be taken too literally. No attempt has been made to cater for all its audience especially the most vulnerable.
It did not address the needs of the mad and sad and cognitively challenged at all.

If we resolve to get rid of or demonize primitive satisfactions whether it be junk food, selfies, or Candy Crush, or maybe even Candy Crush of the spiritual kind too, this world will scream all the more to be looked after and soothed like babies in all matters of importance and non-importance so that responsibilities fall onto someone else and never ourselves - medical procedures, super investments, workplace supervision, allergy information sheet, manufacturers of non-edible stuff needing to alert the general public in excessively overt ways that non-edible stuff are indeed, not for eating...

on the contrary most of the time if not all, God does not rephrase things or write very explicit disclaimers in Bibles and reduce His people to infants.
and at the same time, just like the very thick headed disciples, our own moments of lucidity and maturity are too few and far in between...
so where is the assurance of God when the desires of our hearts are nothing but infantile?

I am perplexed. Eye ball gouging especially still gets me from time to time. I still want to work this one out.

Masha you are married~~~~>.<~~~~~

as i have patiently waited for years (and repeatedly mentioned so in this blog too lol)... this day has finally come.

(i think i should be feeling very heartbroken too but i am not feeling very heartbroken at the moment... ) :$$$$

after some self analysing (lol more) i realised maybe the fact that my favourite star/inspiration/role model has proven himself not gay (and capable of openly commiting to a long term heterosexual relationship too lol) is more important that anything else... T_T

the fact that all those years he cracked dirty jokes in midnight radio shows and talked about watching little movies because he really meant them (lol) and not because he was so anxious about something else that he had to use dirty jokes to defend/masquerade himself... i am finding it very touching... *sniffles* x 10

such positive experience of authenticity is probably more of an antidote for my lack of fundamental trust in human beings than many other things... (为什么我的道德观价值观听上去好像总有点不大对……-_-||||）
very relieved i haven't picked a wrong role model many years ago... *giggle*

so... I am again feeling more hopeful about life because of you Masha~ *sniffle some more*
growing old for a ocpd neurotic does not mean growing more pathological and timid and apathetic. it may indeed not be so bad a thing after all... ^_^

---now go forth and be happy and breed little Mashas--- XD

KYOTO

so....
Fukuyama Ryoma...

Saitou san and Okita san (and all the rest of Shinsengumi)....

and Abe no Seimei sama...

I am coming!!!! Wait for me~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ :D

 

glimpse of hope

I gave my training coordinator a call to ask about my blocked email account (and job next year too) and she sounded pleased that I called her. "i thought you were going to say you really liked (insert name of certain other prestigious mental health service) and not planning to come back! " with me shaking my head like a regressed kid on the other end of the phone.
Then she told me I can doing part time next year.
So my delusions of abandonment were actually delusional. lol
and I got told I was wanted and also that I got exactly what I wanted in the same breath. Don't think such moments happen very often in life at all.

If i am so persistently not excited about becoming a boss i might as well slow things down. after all I am not going to live forever, and there are certain other things i probably want to get out of the way more urgently than getting my papers. it certainly seemed that after many years of toil there is now finally hope of freedom(with new fantasies of my training coordinator smiling down serenely like a buddha lol).

i made a resolution last month to at least write a little bit of chinese everyday so it wouldn't be so painful like earlier in the year trying to get the rusty engine running again. after all, I really don't know if my decades long fixation on chinese writing is the ultimate passive aggressive gesture towards my parents for plucking me out of the security of home and completely ignoring the trauma of it and wanting me to be thankful regardless, just as i really don't know if me being a Christian is also the ultimate passive aggressive gesture towards parents too - me needing a bigger greater and more powerful god to trump all those shitty little gods they worship *shock horror did i really say that* (and as I just I fantasized about buddha smiles rather than halos this is really ambivalent feeling stuff lol more)

well rudeness and insults aside it probably just means atheism was never an option lol, and there is enough grace to cover this very passive aggressive person who never seems to be able to leave her poor parents alone, and the writing continues too... at times in little hard squeezed irrelevant bits for now but at least it is a start that can hopefully prepare me for the extra time and space next year. (the hard squeezed bits now have a new spot: 豆瓣)

and hopefully it would also mean i can learn take a bit more responsibility for not only my time, health, finances and dADLs (lol) but what i want, what i think i want, what if i don't end up achieving what i want, and what if even when I achieve what i want it is not that great and making me worse off... and all the rest of it.

Out of Africa

so i have been even less happy with life when i was told by boss last week that i needed to do a big presentation next month in front of all the bosses in a service completely strange to me. :$$$$ I am no good at presentations even on familiar grounds (and even when the audience is only 2-3 people) and just thinking about what's going to happen in that packed room with unfamiliar bosses was enough to make me hyperventilate.

not to say a big part of the presentation is going to be on the controversy of Exit international. :$$$$$ i must confess i don't really have a strong sense of social justice... i feel very honoured and happy when smart friends invite me to join their vigorous intellectual ethical debates... but my own views often go no more than the universal basic understanding that the more you ban people from doing something the more people would want it so what is the point...
anyways i am having a week off and tried to look up stuff on Exit International and felt very poisoned in many ways...
maybe i just need to chill and have some valium. :(

hence the procrastination and denial start and I went back to read old mangas. I first read Tokyo Love Story when I was 15 and then watched the more famous TV adaption some years later and over time the two somewhat different storylines merged a bit, until recently via someone else's reviews I suddenly realised what was really going on...

Rika Akana... the altruistic gregarious smiling goddess loved by everyone in the series, was actually a fulminant borderline in the manga.
reading back i managed to spot even the parasuicidal gestures...lol  there was this bit when she had an argument with Kanji and ran out in a thunderstorm and purposefully clipped her hair with a metal clip showing everyone she wanted lightening to strike her because Kanji was not being nice... -_-|||| (this is textbook stuff!!!)
...and the reason why Kanji went out with her in the first place, and why she was somewhat accepted into their little friendship circle since high school, had a lot to do with their high school borderline friend who suicided at the age of 17.
when I first read it I completely failed to see the relevance of the dead friend and mentally skipped chunks of people's flashbacks about events from high school (probably found it really boring too)...
and now they finally make sense... *sniff*

Fumi Saimon is a brilliant storyteller and has a philosophy degree but probably hadn't studied much psychology by the time she came up with borderline Rika:
and because of that she never had a condemning tone about Rika and her impulsive unjustified actions. she attributed her BPD to her desire for authenticity and freedom, 2ndary to her early upbringing in the primitive carefree vibrant environment of Africa.
Now moving on to the TV series, instead of primitive Africa, Rika came from America.
So borderlines are from Africa and goddesses are from America.
...
....
......this is so racist even racist me cringed.

so, back to the manga, i ended up crying almost non-stop when I got to the last volume.
playboy Mikami:
Overall my life is a success: I became a doctor, I am popular with girls, and now I have a beautiful fiancee, but only one thing lacking...
I have had no happy childhood.
successful people often want perfect success, but there is no way to change past misfortunes.
I want to give my son perfect happiness, only in this way my success will be complete.
He can play by the river until the sun goes down. and when he is hungry, he comes home, his parents would have made him a warm dinner, smiling as they welcome him back...
哭成狗……

Satomi as a teenager arguing with the rest of the class after the borderline girl committed suicide and left a note on the class blackboard saying "I hate all of you."
-What she told us by her death, i think, is just that we cannot buckle under such unjustified violence.
-Is suicide a form of violence against those who are left behind?
-I think it is, and such an angry suicide note is an act of cowardice.
-How can you say such terrible things about a friend who passed away?
at which point the majority of the class became indignant about Satomi's attitude and left the room but only Satomi, Mikami and Kanji stayed. Each of them were affected by the borderline suicide more than anyone else:
Mikami had a one night stand with the borderline girl not long ago-
Borderline girl tried to ask Kanji out just days before she died and got turned down by Kanji who said he liked Satomi--
Satomi's family ran a love hotel and she saw the borderline girl walking out with a man a week before she died and the girl accused her of reporting it to the teachers while she didn't-
Mikami tried to console Satomi:
-These people are just indulging in their sentimentality - "the noble me who is really considerate about my friend". Everybody used to hate her, didn't they?
I really don't think we can take dead people's last words too seriously. In crime shows we often hear the criminals saying before they die "i did it"... but if I am the criminal I will definitely say "I didn't do it".
Humans are all fallen. Who knows how true people's words are before they die?
and Satomi continued... crying:
-I thought she died hating me, but I am not going to admit defeat.
With people who really dislike me, who dislike me to the point that they wanted to go and die...
I am not going to run away. I am going to accept it.
继续哭成狗……

and Rika Akana meeting Kanji for one last time in Ehime, when Kanji told her about their high school borderline classmate who died and how much she reminded him of her:
What a joke. I am just Rika Akana. I am not going to be like anyone else.
and I am not dead yet. I want to live and live and live well.
I want to live and definitely not waste my life.
这次哭成polar bear没救了……

So... Tokyo Love Story is actually Tokyo Borderline Fairytale, good antidote for people, shrinks or not, who are troubled by the fact that others had in some ways, wanted to make them responsible for their own demise. There is a very borderline girl in the story who upsetted many people along the way with her borderliney actions, but in the end with an amazing twist of fate, graciously turned around, took responsibility for her own actions, left things as they were, and salvaged a few people haunted by the memories of a past borderline suicide, by their more positive experiences with her.

and I feel salvaged too by you, lovely Rika Akana.
and you really didn't have to look as good as this. *hearts*

The runaway job

i am two weeks into my new job and already not liking what i am seeing. I still like the work itself more than any other subspecialities of this field... but this is a mere 20-30% of my week, and i really don't know if that's really enough to sustain me.

apart from a big boss who doesn't really seem to trust his colleague of at least two decades and gets me involved in uncomfortable (and very unnecessary) conversations, i look at the psychology team and feel very speechless almost every single day. one prominent member has already made multiple strange personal/professional comments and the other day she dropped another bomb as she was telling me about a pt: i think pall care is just slow euthanasia.
?!@_@...
?!@_@...x10
i kept quiet and moved the conversation on from her passionate stance for unknown reason. it was however enough for the fleeting acronym of "aphra" to flash across my head.
这算是鬼话还是人话？你这个样子还要teach人家psychology????
but maybe my professional suspicions are also just be projections of my own discomfort with people who fail to even put up a temporary facade professionally and instead make their personal views and feelings spilling everywhere even in front of strangers.

end of the day i am not void of empathy for my new boss or psychology colleagues. To be good at this work we cannot simply shut things out and be blunted, and the level of sensitivity we need to maintain makes us vunlerable to all kinds of poisons in life. 生老病死 happen around everyone and hit everyone hard and affect us in all sorts of ways. and if we are finding our own lives and related poisonous thoughts and feelings difficult to manage, what do we do? we go on to poison ourselves? or others? or both?

I am not privy into my boss's personal life but i have heard gossips of tragedy and sadness. i can still take pride in myself these days for keeping a psychotic borderline at chronic high suicide risk on cto seeking admission out of hospital for community mx despite my past bad experiences (and then go home and worry and not have an appetite for days) but where will i be when i get to boss's age?

i will probably be far worse off in clinical practice and personal life. i may already be dead from consequences of all this chronic sugar and carbonated drink craving and erratic binge eating and non-eating.

so i am kind of relieved to think i did all the background work so i can go back to my old workplace and 95% certain i will want to go back after 6 months. what really bothers me however is the fact that everyday I still drive past my home away from home for the past 9 years...
...and despite my dislike of the new, i don't feel homesick about the old or miss it very much at all.  囧

Maybe I just need a runaway job, like people who have runaway accounts and can take off at any time, so that when I am unwell and unfit for work i can admit i am unwell and unfit for work and get away and do something else.  For now i am starting to think at least having a space away from every psychological mindedness related stuff is probably what I need at this point in time. chinese ppl overall are not very psychologically minded. when there is a good traditional chinese story that is not psychologically minded but still decent and makes sense it is worth gold. (the Bible on the other hand is very psychologically minded... i remember reading stories of certain biblical heros when i was younger and always thought these people get a bit funny at times, and nowadays a lot of the funniness have very reasonable psychological explanations and make perfect sense... )
but I will leave the Bible alone for once.lol



i finished watching a romantic period drama this week (with no significant biopsychosocial stressors to decompensate me and make me turn to more violent bloodthirsty alternatives... XD) and really liked it. It has its brainless bits, and is not psychologically minded at all (kept on asking to myself how can person A interact with person B with such ease and not project feelings of past issues with person C onto person B etc etc etc... 囧）

but it was a sweet good story with good looking people that after watching once i want to watch it again. *giggle* both male and female leads were older than me and still looked stunning (yes I am at the age now that i do mind these things -_-|||) Wallace Huo has been around for a while but I was never really into him. think i found him too good looking and not really my type... lol there were also gossips around re: him into activities that were a little more tangible and transactional than watching little movies (if you get what i am getting at... XD)

but i find him so professional in his work it's almost touching. he's such a convincing romantic lead and so stable in his performances in almost every drama with different actresses there are hardly ever any half-hearted sloppy scenes. (remembering masha and his facial spasms when he just needed to look a bit "interested" in a female lead who has a more commanding air than him...-_-|||)

so when professionalism is a little short in supply in real life at the moment, this realisation is somewhat inspirational. and as politically incorrect as i have always been, if stars have enough likeable attributes, i don't find transactional lifestyles in the privacy of ones' own homes very bothering at all.

The annual report on rejoicing (4)

Me, TeddyBär in the house, and beautiful days

when I first started this annual report I had no idea where it was heading... at most I probably wanted to rant about how frustrating life in the real world has been... after all, I have reached a point with work (even when nothing adverse happened recently to decompensate me) that now and then after seeing a patient despite knowing i have done all the right things i would still be so miserable and not wanting to eat for days(and i am still endeavouring to pretend everything is normal and will somehow head in the right direction...-_-||||)

i have tried to do what I can to salvage my chinese writing site but after various attempts it remains unsalvageable. I am getting close to the point of saying LET THE PAST DIE just like uncle Soames did (of course we don't mean it, but at least our efforts in trying are commendable lol)

The other day I read about the German polar bear imitators. I found it all kinds of cuteness overload and wouldn't mind at all posing next to one myself. *giggle*
I don't know if people who befriended me all feel in a similar way... that I always seem to have such a TeddyBär hanging around me. not quite a normal soft toy, it's kind of furry, subjectively cute(or not), but somewhat intrusive and hard to comprehend, with ludicrous fake fangs and claws.
and because of TeddyBär, I am not that engaged with the real world.

I then recalled one deep buried fond memory. 10 years ago around this time of the year my friends grouped together and drew a manga book for my 21st present with a storyline of me being a superhero time travelling amongst all my favourite stories...
None of them were drawing people, neither were they TeddyBär lovers like me (at least not my type of TeddyBär lol) .
Yet everyone made an effort to draw, and not only tolerated but played with my TeddyBär in the process.

(the cover of my very personal manga book...)
It's been 10 years. Though I never grew out of various TeddyBär issues, many of these friends stuck around and had numerous hot pots with me in the past decade.

and I realised I am finally a 10/10 because of that, 10 years later.
Gomenasai mina-san.

I think I really need to learn the skills of breaking down all kinds of conscious/subconscious self throat-grabbing behaviour, which are ultimately the joy killers.
What would have stopped me hitting a 10/10 in the past may have a lot to do with my critical internal mother, who kept on berating me that TeddyBär playing is 不务正业, and unless i could focus whole heartedly on the real world I was not going to get anywhere or even if i get somewhere, one day I will be found out and made to pay the price...
and then the self throat-grabbing starts... even with the manga book by friends, I don't think I have allowed myself to be too happy about that--
in my mind that would be using my real friends as means to an end, as well as somewhat implying that TeddyBär was more important than the actual company of real friends, and that would be not quite right...
and before very long the throat-grabbing beliefs turned into not only my internal mother but my friends and even God all berating me for needing a TeddyBär to get on with life.
and I then enjoy neither TeddyBär nor friends nor work nor God... -_-|||||

It is as if saying auntie in the photo was hanging around TeddyBär too much and uncle thought she didn't love him anymore and got angry and bashed auntie up when they got home which would be very ridiculous.
(if uncle and auntie are actually like that they both need to come to see me...lol more)

So, I am all mushy and sentimental now.
I really thank God for that time when my friends and my TeddyBär played with each other.
and the many beautiful days since then.
and the many more yet to come.

With Masha and his TeddyBär (again!) I end my annual report on rejoicing (or my inability to do so).
and the very sporadic insight about self throat-grabbing, is probably going to be only the start of a long process...
May my steps continue to be guided.

The annual report on rejoicing (3)

BFM*s, and the tenderness of this world

Every once in a while (more like several decades) there is a lucky generation that got to know the Forsytes through television. I was part of that lucky cohort and over time they became family to me.

Now that is something for which I always consider myself very lucky.

The story is somewhat soap-operaish, and rather straightforward in lots of ways. There is uncle Soames, Beloved Family Member #1, and auntie Irene, Beloved Family Member #2. BFM #1 hurted BFM #2 badly, and never managed to repair the damage by the end of the story no matter how much he wanted to(and tried), despite the fact too that BFM #2 wronged him first.

"I gave her all she wanted. I would have given her even-forgiveness-but she chose to leave me."

For quite some time I have wanted to write something with the title "the parable of the very forgiving uncle Soames" but then genuinely felt quite sorry for poor uncle Soames if I titled it that way. Sarcastic wording aside what I wanted to say was more or less the same. The Forsyte Saga probably has taught me more about forgiveness than all the decent Christian sermons/books/chicken soups for the soul I got exposed to put together.

We all love stories of forgiveness gestures on a grand scale (eg. concentration camp survivors forgiving Nazis in court, mothers forgiving the murderers of their sons in court etc) and wished that these would inspire us to go on living as more forgiving people day to day dealing with the smaller offences of others. Most of us however don't quite seem to understand why these stories are so appealing and yet the day to day forgiveness remains so hard:
-the inspirational forgiveness stories are so very clear cut and black and white
-the day to day forgiveness that is required of the rest of us is hardly ever black and white and clear cut. More often than not, the offences are mutual and the debt owing are mutual, regardless who may have subjectively been dealt a more decisive blow
-none of us would be very comfortable with the notion of mutual debt owing, and by gravitating towards the inspirational larger than life forgiveness stories, we wished we could also see our own situations as clear cut as"you owe me heaps of money and I owe nothing", feeling conveniently victimised and sweeping our own debts under the carpet

the parable of the unmerciful servant has called us not to grab people by the throat and demand instant payment and throw people into prison. It still puzzles me why we would be deluded that as long as we evade such behaviour in a very literal way every other crime under the sun becomes permissible or even commendable...
no, this is not a call to ride on a moral high horse called "forgiveness" and parade in the street with signs of "I have cancelled the debts of blah and blah" just to publicly announce they have owed you money in the first place to the general public.
nor is this a call to shove "forgiveness" down people's throats and if they put up any resistance, instead of the prison, we drag them into our own dungeons  and lock them up and abuse them till they accept "forgiveness" shoved down their throats.
nor does it give us a right to roam the street day and night to seek and stalk our debtors just so we get our chance to stage our heroic debt cancelling gestures.
and it is probably still not quite right to graciously cancel our debtor's few thousands and not bring anything else up while knowing fully we ourselves owe him/her more than a few thousands as well... or even worse... assume our own debts towards others are automatically cancelled because we are already so graciously cancelling theirs...or worse yet...get offended when our good Christian debtors don't cancel our debts first and remind them that the Master's wrath is close at hand...

This is probably just my personal opinion but i think what wasn't spoken in the parable but may still be a calling... is that when we still haven't fully processed the master's grace, or when we are a bit muddled in the head and couldn't figure out whether we owe others any money or not, or when we know we are prone to impulsive behaviours of throat grabbing +/- public signposting +/- dungeoning +/-force feeding +/- stalking and harrassing (aren't they all variations of throat grabbing anyway?)...
kindly step away from the street for now, and face your debtors only when you know you have the capacity to sort something out properly.

Now, back to The Forsyte Saga.
I love auntie Irene. I want to watch her looking beautiful and playing the piano and smiling kindly at me. She is still a bit of a little girl's idol to me. yes I need my jump comic or taiga drama hot-bloodedness, but what I managed to take from her passive aggression actually was what gave me the very breath that has kept me alive during some very difficult years...
though I haven't really told her that I am not an uncle Soames hater. He, like the rest of us, wants beauty and love and absolution more than anything else and only turned to property entitlement in desperation when he was utterly disappointed and deprived in this regard.
and, just like the rest of us, he has not a single clue, what does it really mean, to cancel another's debt without throat-grabbing in one form or another when matters get a bit personal.
but I suspect she already knew, and is not mad at me for that.

there is a time for Ryomaden and the call to fight till your last breath, but positive energy comes in other forms too--
uncle Soames and auntie Irene, and their joys and woes, to me, are the tenderness of this world.

No matter how many times I read the book (in English or its chinese translation), bits of it never fail to bring me close to tears: Indian summer, Balthasar's death as he joyously greets his master one last time, but what is probably more heartbreaking is when uncle Soames proves himself not really a ruthless man of property but a doting father capable of love and nurture (which would probably land him within the 0.5% percentile of better human beings than the rest 95.5% lol am just catastrophizing again)... and yet we all know no matter how much he reforms with the passage of time there is still no reward for him in sight...

I die a little every time I read this bit:
"For many years he had ceased regretting, even vaguely, the son who had not been born; Fleur filled the bill in his heart."

But this sadness does not translate into a 2-3/10. In fact it is probably an 8-9/10.

*borrowed the term BFM from the Mockingbird magazine with thanks~

The annual report on rejoicing (2)

This is probably a chronic 7/10.

Clear soba broth with Saitou-san
I saw Saitou-san in that little noodle stall around the corner, sitting at his usual spot eating quietly from a bowl. As I approached my level of distress was evident. He said nothing and did not even glance up from that bowl, but it looked like i at least had his reticent consent to sit down.

As I stuttered and perseverated explaining my predicament he just quietly slurped away at his noodles and didn't knock me out with one hit of his scabbard. I hoped I could claim with some kind of pride that ever since the day I first met him when I was 15 his motto has become my motto and over all these years I have in some ways held firmly to my beliefs and have not turned into a tragic failure in his eyes.

but at the end of the day, I know deep down I have in fact became a gutless, boring, and annoying adult. Despite all kinds of help (and all my own half-hearted efforts), I am still kicking and fighting the role I thought I've accepted as my life calling. I figured he wouldn't have lots of patience for losers like me.

He sneered a little, probably at the para-religious terminology. It's ok. He never struck me as the religious type anyway. Then he finished slurping his soba and finally spoke, surprisingly not as sarcastic in tone as I thought:

"You've lost your guts, haven't you? "
"Never had much to start with." I replied without thinking.
"Oh is that right?"
He laughed out loud in this crisp wintry air. Pushing aside the empty bowl he lit a cigarette and sat back on his stool, puffing a cloud of smoke next to me. My eyes felt a bit teary.

I probably haven't changed much from that anxious clueless teenager years ago. When most of my peers covered their diaries with pictures of boy stars (or at least better looking anime characters lol) I drew in mine pages of Saitou-san sword-waving and looking murderous and mean and found it strangely containing. Life was good back in the old days when academic excellence covered over a multitude of sins and I never got referred to school counsellor or CAMHS for deviant behaviour...

maybe I should have told him about the good old days instead, and let him know that after this many years, these words of his, have never failed to become music for me:

As a member of the shinsengumi and of the police, I have a duty to protect the peace of Japan and her people. once I accepted this role, losing my own life, or killing another, became a given. To obsess over a principle of "no kill" like battousai, is like digging one's own grave. the dead are at peace, the only thing I can do, is to take up their unfufiled responsibilities.  Only in this way, their souls will rest peacefully in heaven.

As I savoured his words once again I got a bit emotional and my eyes became even more blurred, but he got up and, with the cigarette butt still hanging from between his teeth, let out a little laughter:

"but my job is different to yours, don't be a brainless fool and take everything on board."

"What should I do then, Saitou-san?"
"Think for yourself."

The annual report on rejoicing (1)

The other day I saw a patient referred by her GP. she spoke of a two year history of episodic teariness and acopia with finding employment after being sacked at work. She has been told by her family and probably her GP too that she has chronic depression and a psych reg review would mean a stamp of approval for her DSP application.
I asked her if there were anything she enjoyed in life.
she brightened up and told me how much she loved her son's company: when my son visits or takes me shopping my mood is a 10/10!

that moment I had all kinds of swearing words in English/mando/shanghainese flashing across my head.
Tell me again why am I seeing you?
I certainly cannot remember the last time my own mood hit a 10/10 (or that it ever made it to a 10/10, ever,  for that matter)

In all fairness the patient with her secondary gain and familial bliss even in the worst Freudian Oedipus Complex sense (disturbing stuff, don't google it) did not warrant the load of internal multilingual obscenities. (and no I don't internally swear at patients as a habit) I do wonder if my own guilt and intolerance at my incapacity to rejoice and create positive energy played a huge role here somewhere.

the calling for the season to rejoice in the Lord is still left standing and I don't think I have progressed much after all since a year ago. Guilt has certainly been getting worse as I realized in various ways my lack of capacity to enter a state of exultation about various religious or secular matters (even Korean drama with handsome rich DID patient)
-despite getting really lucky for the past three years and now no more burdens of exams/courses/essays
-despite the long cases being scrapped off from the system just as i was about to sit for exams (still can't believe it happened)
-despite getting free psychotherapy for almost three years now (T_T)
-despite often if not always getting the rotations I wanted and which other people coveted, and more often than not I end up not finding them very inspiring... (we have a few strong characters in our midst and training coordinator gets lots of crap these days for allegedly playing favouritism with the rotations. God bless her. T_T)
Sadly rejoicing is one of those things that gets ever harder with an effort based approach. the more I try to boost up positive energy as a sign of appreciation, the more i fail. i become constantly plagued by the urges of kowtowing to various relevant parties involved (including God) for my lack of gratitude (not even directly paying back but merely going forth and live a positive and content life, deriving meaning and satisfaction from my very meaningful profession... )
but maybe at the end of the day i am just as bad as the clueless person who came up with this diagram below, and I've been kowtowing to that perfectionistic image of myself in the water, where all things within me and outside of me, by a nebulous timeframe of the good and bad things happened so far, need to at a mysterious moment in life fall into their right places.

The dichotomy of 2 Cor 6:10 however got me thinking laterally. Likely in  a desperate attempt of self-justification of my lack of positive energy, I am slowly counting my blessings and coming up with a list of situations where my mood undoubtedly reached beyond a 5/10...

1. The reassurance time and time again, that I need not be part of a madhouse to still believe in God

Articles like these are often life-saving and can easily get me up to a 7-8/10.
Everything I like fits together
5 Damaging Messages about God's Presence
When i go to a service these days and listen to the very emotionally charged P&W and pastor sermons I still often wonder uneasily whether I am in a madhouse. (did I tell you I decided to go to my latest church because it is held in a cinema and the attendees are many and the lights are dim hence people are less likely going to spot my uneasy affect and lack of emotional participation?)
Sorry this is offensive. :( though I know I have been offensive like this for many years and probably just couldnt articulate it and hid well behind superficial meek and mildness. Better it comes out now.

Still by His grace there is progress despite my hypervigilance with madhouseness. After being homeless for many years I have finally found a cell group with very lovely people (all girls, all Asians, like minded, enjoy the same food) XD *I know...
and being part of a mentoring committee with really nice intern and med students has also helped a great deal with this hypervigilance. Surprised the other day i had a long meeting genuinely and respectfully engaging with people I didn't know that well (and managed to pray in public a few times lol) and walked away feeling quite recharged rather than exhausted.

So, work in progress as always. but there is hope of rejoicing, and 7-8/10 moods.

拼命

Much needed positive energy once in a blue moon. XD From Ryomaden by Ryoma's dad:

I have seen different versions of the same line that had shrinky buzz words here and there but sounded no better than any average chicken soup for the soul. Good translation makes a huge difference. It is so simple and powerful and probably even surpassed the original Japanese I don't know...
Well I am lost for words... I don't know how to translate this into English without compromising its beauty... T_T

anyways watching Ryomaden a bit more systematically at the moment. it is tedious and long but abounds in positive energy so hopefully it can lend me a crutch through some current covering difficulties and upcoming loss and abandonment issues lol.
still not planning to watch the last episode, can't bear to see Fukuyama Ryoma being hacked to death. T_T
and trying not to be too harsh about Masha's bad acting this time round too... lol

Kill Me Heal Me

when those really sad (or sweet, or both) korean dramas first became popular i think i felt a bit perplexed. the storylines and characters are so repetitive! What's so enjoyable about all this and why do people watch one after another? in recent times however as i try to identify and work through my interpersonal deficits (lol) i kind of came to the decision that I probably should watch more emotionally intense korean dramas to help fixing myself--

-- and i found this new one called Kill Me Heal Me that had really good ratings and reviews and is about a psych resident and her rich handsome dissociative identity disorder patient falling in love and living happily ever after (and her fixing his DID along the way too)

That's the show for me! i will identify with the psych resident! i think it will address my deep subconscious narcissistic needs! I am going to watch it!

It did turn out to be a good show. the DID patient was rich and handsome and gentle and funny and clearly more capable of love and nurture than any mentally undisturbed person(lol) and kept on taking the psych resident out to all sorts of yummy places to eat (not to say all his other personalities all happen to like the psych resident too and the acting was really good lol)

i genuinely thought i managed to get myself hooked despite its somewhat challenging ethical stance(lol more), watching multiple episodes in one night and wanting to stay up late and watch more episodes etc...

and then i had my food poisoning...
and then i felt really weak and vulnerable and miserable and irritable...
and then i lost all patience watching rich handsome DID patient going lovey-dovey. I think i skipped the last five episodes and went straight for the ending and quickly fast forwarded it to finish it off...
and i went back to old favourites for comfort and kept on rewatching this...



and this...



my regressed comfort position clearly has nothing to do with rich handsome nurturing DID patient but more isolated and damaged good looking smart guy quietly sipping his wine/tea scheming/plotting away with an ever present subtle streak of cruelty...

and i spent the last weekend sitting at home dishevelled and reading up on history of chinese explosives. I think i also had a dream of myself blowing up buildings and woke up feeling pretty emotionally satisfied... @.@

ever since i entered the shrinkage i've become really conscious that although-i-don't-know-whats-wrong-but-something-definitely-went-wrong-with-my-developmental-trajectory and found it increasingly difficult to pursue my old interests (often in isolation) guilt-free, without ruminating that i-am-just-being-avoidant-and-pathological-maybe-i-really-should-be-out-there-connecting-with-others-and-learning-to-comfort-and-nurture-and-being-comforted-and-nurtured-etc-etc-etc...

as always, work in progress.

but I will end with something that really helps with such guilt and to me, is sweeter than music. i read My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk in my final year med school and grew fonder of the book by the year. I shall complete my favourite poem from there:

My fickle heart longs for the west when I’m in the east and for the east when I’m in the west
My other parts insist I be a woman when I’m a man and a man when I’m a woman
How difficult it is to be human, even worse is living a human life!
I only want to amuse myself frontside and backside, to be eastern and western both.

there is something immensely captivating and redeeming through its brevity and simplicity that I still cannot fully fathom. it has certainly taken many years for me to transit from the initial shock horror "this is grossly inappropriate" to finally realising that the comforting and redeeming part of this lies not in its poetic first line but the rest...

though i am so deep in my cold cave of low anthropology (or residual nihilistic buddhist philosophy, whichever) that even fantasies of rich handsome DID patient can't fix me -- whenever this grossly inappropriate poem comes to mind -- the world strangely feels warmer, and brighter...

...and it assures me that i am not beyond all hope as a shrink(or as a human) to comfort and nurture, despite the ever strong desire at times to retreat into a more orderly and satisfying world of scheming smart guys being triumphant in their schemes, legendary generals neatly chopping off people's heads, and gunpowders and explosives doing great jobs and looking amazing.

so, dears, if this is shock horror to you, kindly take it as allegorical, remember my more appropriate side, and still be my friends. XD

i want chips with truffle oil...

i've been down with food poisoning since early this week. By now I have tried all the different flavours of gastrolyte and they don't actually taste too bad. (Hydrolyte on the other hand... taste disgusting) The jelly icy poles are in particular... very yummy. :P
in the initial days as i was vomiting and getting more dehydrated i think i realised how reluctant i was to turn up to ED even if matters deteriorate overnight. i find it absolutely degrading... if i will potentially end up neigbouring that psych referral(in his early 30s and accompanied by his mother) who managed to occupy a night ED cubicle after having had a homeopathic overdose and a couple of beers now crying that he wanted a new psychiatrist.
i figured that will make me more hemodynamically unstable.

The issue however may go a bit beyond homeopathic overdosers or overconsidering usage of precious ED resources. Coming from a paranoia driven family where even day to day sickness is a matter to be controlled by pathological efforts, the failure of "not getting sick" perhaps evokes all kinds of primitive guilt and self punishment. The knee-jerk instinct is hoping for everyone and everything to disappear, leaving little capacity of nurture seeking unless by conscious brain-driven efforts.

Now as my stomach has recovered faster than my bowels I've been craving all kinds of fried food but can't eat any. T_T I still fondly remember the time my christian mentee brought me to eat really nice chips with truffle oil in chaddy food court and as we were sharing the oily crunchy goodness she got me to watch sia's Chandelier mv on her phone, surprised that I never heard of it.
She told me that she absolutely loved the dance sequence, and watched the MV at least 10 times.
i haven't really watched western music videos for the past decade or longer and at the time felt a bit judgemental internally(why are we so quick to become judgemental???)... so although there were still all kinds of superficial unconditional positive regard (lol) deep down the suspicious little voice just went on:
You like this? what do you like about this? isn't a 10 yr old dancing almost half naked a bit disturbing?

well it certainly took a significant degree of amnesia and insightlessness for me to become judgemental at that point. I should remind myself what my favourite Masha song is:



I have watched this at least 100 times and still love it to bits. it pressed all the right buttons for me.
now that's probably more disturbing.

so, maybe i will be less paranoid and less judgemental and tell her about my favourite music video too, next time we have chips with truffle oil together. :)

mental health awareness season

Masato-sama is playing a psychiatrist this spring season...
...but it was so bad I barely survived Ep 1... T_T

stereotypical stuff: meek and mild genius shrink + modern day saviour + martyr who does all kinds of psychotherapy in a sticky touchy feely way (incl. CBT DBT psychoanalysis EMDR just to name a few lol) in a department that otherwise only prescribes happy pills. There was this one imaginary scene in which he acted Jesus-like, happily shepherding different colours of sheep fluff balls on green pastures... -_-|||| *vomit bag*

brainless regressed characterisation aside i must say I always found something quite perverse about Masato-sama's meek and mild smile when it is only meant to be meek and mild. XD he's prob one of my fav jap actors, who has this amazing ability to do really explosive long monologues... eg. narcissistic verbose Komikado-sensei~ XD
but i always thought there is something even more...
that there is a certain mad streak in him...

his Okita Souji from When the Last Sword is Drawn has been my favourite in years out of all the various okita depictions. the scene where okita realised his days were numbered i've watched at least 10 times... even before this fan video was made... *faint* (btw Sato Koichi was not perfect as Saitou-san here but he did get Saitou's murderous streak right XD)



my other favourite was eccentric misunderstood ED physician Hayami-sensei from The Triumphant Return of Shogun Rouge... the bit where he gave this anti-psychiatry rant in front of some professional conduct board... loved it~ and the bit where he put lipstick on as a way to prepare himself for war with a severely under-resourced ED packed with patients... *faint some more*



never mind... i guess these days people much more prefer to watch him just being meek and mild then... :(

Gintama marathon during Easter week

my viral prodrome turned out not to be psychosomatic after all. I spent the week having intermittent sick leaves, eating jelly, abusing cold and flu tablets, watching Gintama and thinking about life...
....
....-_-|||||

 

The fact that in recent years I often get a dysthymia post trip back from my hometown is probably no news to anyone. apart from apparent factors such as the lack of facebook and blogspot and gmail and all sorts of other good stuff... there were probably much deeper and scarier issues...
...that after some time spent at where i came from i often felt like i was psychologically and spiritually back to square one...
that what was relevant to life was all karma and not at all God and grace and love...
despite more deliberate vigorous devotion time when I was there...
I think i used to be much better at insightlessly and conveniently merging all my beliefs into one hence never really seeing much of a problem.
but it's getting harder to fool myself these days, or maybe I am just becoming more compulsive.

Crying wolf

Alice has been trying to set up her own business for a while and recently told me she had an unpleasant business exchange with my old GP in an attempt to rent his clinic after he retired.
apparently he was really difficult to deal with and not happy for his clinic to be modified in any way including aircon and disabled toilets. (...i suspect a bit racist too probably thinking asians know nothing about architecture and will end up wrecking his beautiful clinic LOL)
but I was joyous and almost in tears. (sorry alice)
He's not dead!
anyways last year GP first left a phone message that he's gone for a knee surgery but planned to return to work but after a while the phone message was gone and after another little while a notice was put up at the clinic that he's now retired.
I think in my mind when I first heard the message I already interpreted "knee surgery" as a euphemism for terminal Ca or terminal organ failure or terminal late onset motor neuron disease or terminal whatever else...
and then interpreted "retirement" as a euphemism of him being dead... or if not dead, dying.
to be fair GP was getting on in years and he used to always forget what speciality I've chosen, ask me every time and scrunch up his already very scrunched up face every time in an exaggerated grimace when i told him i was doing psychiatry.
and i sniffled a little for quite some time last year, every time remembering his psychiatry-related grimace--
thinking he's already dead. T_T

and those friends whom i've misinformed about my GP of 15 years dying or dead or "retired in a bad way" and pressured into offering sympathy...
sorry guys I've cried wolf. (and this is clearly not the first time i was delusional like this about death and dying related issues -_-|||)

its comforting though, that now my last memory or imagination of my GP could be that he's indeed well and happily retired with many more years of longevity ahead of him--
along with the space and energy and mental capacity being difficult doing business with asians so that his beautiful clinic doesn't get wrecked with aircon and disabled toilets.

i thank God for every such moment, when my morbid delusions can get reality challenged like this.

It would be nice to eat jelly even when you are just psychosomatic

I've always been a bit self-conscious about watching anime over the years putting them almost in the same category as jelly/congee/soup--
things that are nice and slimy and effortless which I save for when i am sick and regressed.
but now i am slowly begin to think... these kinds of sustenance is actually still very important, not just when i am physically sick but for emotional unwellness management + prophylaxis too~

Hence time to follow Gintama season 4, coming soon on 8th of April.




Biblical nudity... and why the Easter story is very similar to a Gintama story (or vice versa)

(...am I running the risk of blaspheming?....hmmm...)

Mark 14:51-52 A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him,  he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.

celebrating Easter in the midst of Gintama marathon has probably made me flippant. I just couldn't stop laughing at gloomy solemn chapters of the gospel, especially above verses.
I can almost picture it as a scene from Gintama, nameless young man fleeing naked played by regular offenders (eg. Madao,  Isao Kondo etc). XD

in some ways the unfolding of events on the night before Jesus's crucification really had some brainless senseless Gintama flavour to it.
-disciples who kept dozing off during some critical situation just like the Yorozuya trio who kept on falling asleep even when they were teleported to an alternate space
-Peter's denial as silly as Kagura denying stealing food in the same breath as she munches away on her mouthful of mush/chocolate/whatever...
-soldiers bashing Jesus up and telling him to prophesize who bashed him... I can just imagine Shinsengumi (esp Okita) doing it to Katsura if they ever get hold of him...
(the last comparison is a bit disturbing...  @.@ I think i will stop.)

end of the day, I want to understand why is Gintama so comforting, despite its lack of convincing heros and noble deeds, and instead, endless random simplistic plot, vulgar humour and toilet jokes? and why do I look forward to each new season with such positivity?
-I KNOW that no character I got to know over the years really dies from this series. Main characters, villains, "others"--pet and robots included. No matter what misfortune befalls someone during one episode, i know without a second thought that the person will be well and alive in the next episode, without a physical or mental scar.
-people can be frankly human and flawed and embarrassing - picking noses, forcefully picking other people's noses, getting lazy about housework, being rude, fighting for food, bashing each other up, not paying rent, running away in cowardice from danger(naked sometimes), and yet at the end of an episode, all is well and something would have worked out and something shined.

I am not sure how much of what's good about Gintama can be echoed in the Easter story...
...that Jesus suffered a very miserable ordeal and died in humiliation but was promptly resurrected and had a victorious comeback, and because of this nothing was really lost or hurt or damaged from very ridiculous embarassing human behaviours including young man fleeing naked from the scene...
...that what made this story work out and shine in the end had very little to do with the very embarrassing actual players and how chaotic and vulgar and dark everything got on the scene, but someone bigger and greater than all this happening, just managed to make everything all right.  
...that none of the evil, toxicity, stupidity, sadness and despair on that terrible night, was final.

and we know everything's going to be all right. We know none of this terrible stuff was final.

I've been musing whether one day I can approach my faith with the same confidence as how I approach a Gintama story.
...feeling rest assured that everything's going to be all right at the end of the tunnel, not at some immense effort or terrible cost on my behalf.
...and just as I won't get anxious and sad about Gin-san or Toshi getting multiple stab wounds and looking like they were dying in battles (and write a complain letter to the author demanding to know why he let my favourite characters suffer unnecessarily), that I can also have the confidence that nothing bad in this life is final or have any lasting meaningful impact on the good ending in sight.

and because of above reasons I am less inclined to see Easter as a time to solemnly reflect on how sinful we are and what terrible impact we've had and how Jesus had to be crucified on the cross all because we are such bad people--
but instead, whether we are solemnly aware or not, we remain pathetic, embarrassing, senseless, not really right in the head--
and yet because of what happened during Easter, death, along with all our terrible behaviours, has lost its sting and that nothing, nothing from any of this fleeing-naked-from-the-scene ludicrosity, is final.

New song

Masha is wrapping up his decades of midnight dirty joke radio shows tomorrow... T_T
( i know... i had the 7 year itch... and forgot about his birthday this year...lolz but all good... still my fav star/inspiration/role model... :D)
maybe as a way to compensate his fans, he released a new single this week.
it is titled something along the lines of "living out your self like a flower that continues to blossom"... lol
see here for awesome fan translation...

i was really touched when i read why he discontinued his show...
he basically admitted that not dozing off in the shows has become increasingly more difficult over recent years and thought he was getting old and no longer fit for midnight dirty joke shows...

and in his new lyrics:
Though there are people who help me and try to understand me
why is it that I am still so unable to expose my vulnerable side?
this stupid interfering thing called pride


...can you please not get it right and hit the nail on the head every single time? (T_T)
Arigatou for always making the effort despite your stupid interfering pride though...
that's enough light for me to shuffle my feet forward on gloomy paths--
and with a bit more confidence--
that growing older but wiser is not mere wishful thinking.

let's see how long this link will last:



I found the Mockingbird articles this week particularly challenging... to the point that I actually thought twice before i compulsively shared them on FB... reading them in my post-SH-visit-viral-prodrome(psychosomatic or not) from inconsiderate fob uncles with productive coughs on return flight (and everywhere else) prob didn't help, but let me remind myself to revisit those later.

No Hands Are Clean But Christ’s: Phil Klay’s Redeployment
The Theology of Everything: Jane and Stephen Hawking Head to the Cross

The next person

some time last week as i was going through a patient's records I ran into a clinical entry from a couple of years ago, made by my dead colleague. It was neat, typed, succinct, to the point and done at 7.30 in the evening as part of his routine business hour duties. After reading it I felt really unwell for days. I guess i don't really want to use the word "sad" for what was stirred by those notes, as that would have implied that there was something altruistic and empathetic going on, either of which I am not too sure if I had. it was likely just some weird form of self-pitying and existential crisis...nothing to do with the poor colleague who was known to stay back late all the time to make his work perfect.(I just love having a go at myself don't I?)

Interpretation of elusive feelings of unwellness aside, on that day when I first saw the entry and felt most unwell I drove impulsively all the way to Koorong after work to pick up two commentaries for Ecclesiastes (for some existential solace T_T) and got mistaken for a theology student (which may have implied that i still appeared somewhat pious... and young. quite liked that. XD)

Interesting thoughts came up in this existential solace seeking pursuit...

3 chapters into the one I picked up and read first (the one with the nicer cover lol) what the author said came as a shock and really disturbed me:

The Preacher believes in God, of course, and even mentions him by name, but he made his spiritual quest without God's help. Solomon once said that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge". But what role did godly fear play here in Ecclesiastes? The Preacher did not pray. He did not consult Scripture. Instead he was off and running on his quest for knowledge without ever stopping to consider the majesty of God. He was probing "into the depth of matters by his unaided and unenlightened reason apart from any disclosures of truth that God has granted to man."

I think I had to rub my eyes in disbelief and really wondered why someone who hold such a view about this book would then go on to write a full commentary about it. (and this particular commentary was apparently written for pastors and Bible teachers... *chills*)

the one with the less nice cover (lol more) however was much more respectful and tolerant of apparent inconsistencies (and addressed the shock horror problem above):

What is disconcerting, however, is that confusion about the book's basic message may dissuade preachers and teachers from bringing its theology to bear on the life of the church. Or perhaps more problematic, ill-informed or even reckless interpretation of the book - that which expects a certain kind of cohesion, or expects only certain things from biblical authors - could do more damage than simply avoiding the book altogether.

I think every human more or less would go through one of such moments in our lives, stirred by what we read, seen, heard, experienced:
--that intensely scary feeling of "what really separates me from that person next?"
what separates me from that colleague who had ocpd traits and invested too much in his work and had too high expectations for self and others and probably one day just couldn't take it anymore?
what separates me from that young cancer patient who was so traumatised by her cancer diagnosis and turned to alternative therapy for false promises and hope and then turned around dishing out the same deception to others and died a miserable death in the end?
what separates me from the Preacher who sounded so depressed and saw everything under the sun as meaningless despite being a follower of God with great wisdom?

the knee-jerk reactions, are indeed, the often desperate (and self-important) attempts to find-embellish-make up things we think that will definitely separate us from the next person.
and keep us safe.
i can prioritise and manage my time so much better than my colleague. I know what's important and whats not. I am smarter.
i am much more educated to be lured by alternative therapy crap. i only trust evidence based medicine. I am smarter.
i make sure I go on my spiritual quest being attuned the whole time to God's will. I pray and I read the scriptures. I consider the majesty of God. my insights are more God given and more enlightened. I am smarter(in a Godly way too).
have we ever paused to pounder the possibilities that in essence we are really no different to that next person? that our primitive needs and desires are the same, and so are our anguishes, downfalls and sins? that we more or less all hate the feelings that we have been dealt tough blows by life, and hold fantasies that somehow there is a way out of it by our hard work keeping up good enough images of ourselves? and that no matter how much we yearn and reach out for God's perfection, our existence at least in this life is still very much, day in and day out, "under the sun" just like the Preacher?

It will be uncomfortable, scary, even humiliating to sit with such possibilities.
but we have to endure the pain of sitting with them.
only then will we stop attacking others, in our desperate attempts to build some effort-based security -- to prove that in some ways we are better, smarter, more Godly than the next person and we will not come to demise as he/she did.

so.... am still on my search for some existential solace... T_T though, impulsive retail therapy whether with more overt materialistic gains or from a Christian bookstore invariably has consequences...

the delusions of being good enough

1.There are meaningful lines even in crappy dramas

I don't think i want to watch Ep 2 of this drama after Ep 1 but...

 

above translates as (i think):
I don't even like myself. What then does that make you who like me?
i think the line really appropriately describes the essence of my current fav topic -- one's lack of love for oneself.
(sorry about bad screen captures~ XD I still find Kyoko Fukada very pretty.)

2.From perfection to being good enough

there is a widely known psychological principle of "being good enough". ie. if you don't hold an unrealistic ideal of perfection but just aiming to be good enough then things usually turn out better and you will be spared of emotional distresses...(something along those lines...)
nowadays though i don't think many people would hold the delusion that they are "perfect" or even be aiming for perfection. in fact, many of us often feel rather comfortable acknowledging our known deficits with good grace and humour.
while we can honestly acknowledge we are really not great in many aspects of life--
there will always, always be certain other areas in which we feel we are good enough--adequate---more than adequate--better than the majority etc.
We take pride in these things, no matter how humble we appear on the surface, or how realistically we think we still fall short of "perfection" in those aspects of life.
and the more "good enough" we think we are, the harder we strive to be better at them, which makes it more the easier to avoid addressing areas where our true deficits lie.
in such situations, we often think we are "doing the right thing".

list a few examples:
- missionary pioneer sensed lifelong calling and did awesome work for the advancement of the word of God in woop woop land while grossly neglected his wife and children his entire life
- poet or artist devoted their energy to the noble sake of art, with their children struggling in perpetual disadvantaged environment of poverty and hunger and disarray
- family (or church ministry) oriented professional setting priorities right and getting complimented for that, while doing the bare minimum at work, unloading responsibilities and projecting anxieties onto colleagues and underlings.
- OCPD work oriented person who believe in "the man is nothing and his work is everything" working extra hard day in day out and gets complimented for that while neglecting the need to have a life (as they are not good at it)
- shrink who thinks the call is to master the skills of observation and analysis of the human condition from a certain safe (aka professional) distance while ignoring the importance of establishing genuine human relationships which is almost entirely a diff skill.

those of you who know me will prob find the last couple of dot points sounding rather familiar~ XD

3. Being good enough and being loved

i find the concept of being "good enough" rather dubious. Enough for what? for whom? after all it is much of an expectation from self or others as what perfection is, and just as much, an effort-based approach to life. many times i also suspect it is a euphemism for a higher expectation of some kind of all-rounded perfectionism...
(this article highly amuses me. talking about delusions of unrealistic ideals...)
and i will now get to the hard bit: even if say our impression/standard/belief of being good enough is literally just "being good enough"--
at some stages in our lives, we will invariably fail even that.
i think in many of our minds, we do feel we need to be "good enough" in some ways, in order to be worthy of love.
but there will be that moment in your life, you look at yourself in dismay, wondering why you have allowed whatever happened to have happened, despite you being so good at it, and loathe yourself.
yes, we are now not good enough. For ourselves, for others, or both.
and then we try hard to fix the problem, internalising or externalising it, and we do/think/believe in all sorts of horrible things in advertent/inadvertent conscious/subconscious ways, in order to justify that we are indeed... still... worthy of love.
and when we can't really pull it through, we get depressed/anxious/low self-esteem/comfort eating (you know the rest...)
classic example would be the Cluster Bs - who lie/act out/hurt others/being bad in their desperate attempts to project their badness onto others so that they themselves can keep their fragile beliefs that they are still good enough, and hence worthy of love from others.
the horror however goes on, amongst the rest of us, in much more subtle ways perhaps.

and I think the inevitable human aging process is the best reminder that not only there is no road to perfection by human effort, but even our good enoughs will one day inevitably fail.
we have all seen various degrees of adaptive/maladaptive coping in ourselves and others on the spectrum of difficulty accepting this.

despite often being sabotaged by religiosity, the essence of the Christian faith is indeed the breaking down of this automatic faulty link between being good enough to being good enough for love.
we not only fail at God's perfect standard of perfection. we also fail at our own imperfect standard of good enoughs.
and us being loved, consistently and unconditionally, has nothing to do with our good enoughs or our failures at those, and everything to do with Jesus, and the cross.
Love has nothing to do with worthiness, or good enoughs.
Which includes how nice and meek you are to people, how self-disciplined you are in private life, how enthusiastically you serve at church, how passionately you delivered a sermon/bible study, how much of a good witness you've been at your workplace, how profound your understanding of theological principles are...
and the same goes, even if you fail at any or all of the above areas--
Love is still there, not one bit less.
and quite frankly, I am still struggling to believe and accept that, not only with my head, daily.

it wouldn't be right to claim these ideas as my own. I hijacked from many, and only in the past week, these couple of Mockingbird articles really moved me forward and allowed me to process my thoughts to this point.
Ash Wednesday
Not ideas about love but the thing itself

4. Now going insightless and tangential...

on a much lighter note i went to this last night with Sally and really really enjoyed it. the satisfaction from the realisation that i can now spend my hard-earned money on such beautiful matters of life (instead of useless masters program fees/exam fees/exam prep course fees/re-sitting exam fees if failing) was so great i almost started to suspect whether it was inappropriate/over-indulgent/sinful...

and as i am currently trying to find a cell group to join i do wonder if there happens to be one around thats not too caucasian but literature/museum/gallery/concert/opera/ballet loving...(please let me know!) LOL yes i know, i actually want a hobby/activity group and am paying no attention to importances of godliness blah blah (and racist too -_-|||)... but, as i cannot think of a single time in my life when i did things/wanted things without a self-seeking motive component, i guess i will just be straightforward and frank about it.