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...