acceptance
Sometimes it amazes me how human I am, in those moments when I realize I am happy because a day went well and I met people that I like, and came across random coincidences that all add up. It reminds me again how little I can control my circumstances, and how little control I have over my mood. There is of course, the option of continual surrender, but it is continual and that limits how much I can nullify, dampen, steady myself though I try. And so in this too I must surrender, that I am human after all.
Yesterday I was walking along Adam Rd when I saw a few sights. First, I saw a couple separated by a hedge. The man had parked his truck alongside the road and deserted it, and was showing something on his phone to the woman across the hedge. Both of them didn't look Singaporean; I'm guessing both of them were foreigners here to work to support their respective families. It was quite amusing actually; I wonder if it was legal (and safe) for him to park his truck like that.
Then as I walked across the bridge to the Botanic Gardens mrt, I saw a woman sitting on the steps of the overhead bridge, reading. I think it was a Bible or some other holy book, and she read in the way people do when they need to concentrate, by moving a pen across the lines of the paper as her eyes processed them. She didn't even notice when I turned to look at her. A vagrant, surely, but a purposeful one. She was searching in those moments for meaning, searching for insight to guide her path, searching like one who knows they must have something to fill up their soul. I wondered what she particularly needed that strength for, although of course the need for strength is something we all require and desire.
I really liked seeing them be human. Although they aren't natives, they too are people who are ruled to a great extent by their circumstances. They can't choose to suddenly apparate to wherever they want most in the world, and other than Sundays they perhaps have much to do that they have no flexibility to decide. Again, but for the circumstances that I and they have been placed in, we could trade places. So, it does make me relieved and glad that they are creating a home here, that they are finding meaning.
I do think that we as Singaporeans don't own this land at all. But for history's twists, we wouldn't be here at all and our circumstances could be vastly different. It's like when Pocahontas sings, "You think you own whatever land you land on" about the arrogant colonialists who try to claim title to whatever they see. But in property law, no one actually owns the material land, just a certain strata of land for a limited period of time. So here we are, all equal in our humanity, equal in our vulnerability, comrades in the great struggle of life. There is no real in-group or out-group; all our barriers are constructed by humans and maintained by humans and can be broken through. And in a lot of ways, it is right for us to break free of the fetters on our mind.
*
This relates to something I realized from the sermon yesterday. The pastor related an incident in a book, Their Darkest Hour by Laurence Rees. This book is written by a historian about 35 of his encounters over 20 years of researching and meeting people who lived at the time of the second World War.
Laurence Rees writes about a German woman who lived through Nazi Germany. She imagined her life to be filled with a sense of bourgeois contentment. Like many people, she simply wanted to live a quiet and reasonably comfortable life. When interviewed, she spoke with regret about the day her Jewish neighbour, a kindly and elderly woman, was forced to wear the yellow Star of David. But the Nazi state wasn't all bad, she thought. Though there was a dark side to it, nothing in the world is perfect. And it had its good parts. It allowed her to feel special, as an Aryan. Compared to Germany if it had not fought, and had been crippled by the cost of the losses imposed on it in the truce that ended the first World War, it wasn't the worst that could have happened. For her. After all of it, she spoke about it as though the bad was regrettable but excusable in light of the good. It was something she could live with.
But the pastor pointed out something that she'd missed. The German woman did not realize that all the good things which occurred to her were inextricably linked with the bad that were inflicted upon others.
The Nazi regime worked as an Us vs. Them, where the Them had to be dehumanised and demonised as a separate group, and the Us so content in protecting their own that they could think it was really not their concern nor their problem that the Them was suffering. Although we all have some limited power to change our circumstances, at least the power to spend our time and our voice and our life, we surrender our power when we choose to think we have nothing to do with the things around us that we observe, and that we acquiesce to. And so, the German woman did not realize that in that world she lived in, she could only feel that special as an Aryan and live that comfortably, on the pain and effort of others. On the distancing and persecution of others.
And this brought me back to this realization: When we ask to be treated as more special than others, when we ask to be told we stand above others, we cannot do so without others being lowered. Without others being trampled, and with us trampling them in our actions (even if we did not actively make the first decision to start this arrangement). It's not always that we should accept and continue to promote the situation we are brought into, as though our going along with it did not contribute to its maintenance. Because you do have that choice. So even though we all are tempted to wish for a life above the average, tempted to wish to be lucky and revel in our luck, we must know that this necessarily causes a tradeoff in the situation and status of others.
In the Christian context, the pastor told us to give up on our small ambitions and juvenile passions, that we laughably hang onto as though they are true passions. And this includes desires like wanting to be special. Desires for recognition and love and acceptance are not unacceptable in themselves, but they can be twisted when they are directed wrongly, hoping to be quenched in the wrong ways. We should not demand or accept that specialness should come from being a German or a Jew or a Singaporean or our status in society, but instead we would be more than adequately satisfied by the fact that we are all special and beloved and precious in God's sight. If we would give up our small ambitions and juvenile passions for the glory of God, the glory of Love Himself, we would be more rewarded in the end.
I do believe that life is a war, in which there is, in the long run, no sitting on the fence. We'll be faced with choices, that will mark our actions ever after unless we later make choices to turn back. As the woman said, "What can we do?" Once you're willing to compromise one neighbour, pretending you are worlds apart from the realities of the benefits you reap from this arrangement, it becomes easier to pretend you are not complicit in compromising the next and the next.
It's a personal struggle, that not one of us is exempt from. Again, being all human, we all share in the same fear that it'll be too difficult and that we won't be enough, and the same desire that we should just live comfortably and luxuriate in material bliss. The same temptation to enjoy what we have of life, without thinking too much. In the attempt to avoid this, all we can do is to ourselves strive to think clearly, to sort out the truth of our lives instead of willfully blinding ourselves, and to encourage each other and care for each other in the great journey, the arduous race.
Somehow, though we may fall at times, and life will seem bleak as more and more of those close and far fall away, I believe that it will be awesome in the end for those who use their choices well, when we are finally called to rest.
Yesterday I was walking along Adam Rd when I saw a few sights. First, I saw a couple separated by a hedge. The man had parked his truck alongside the road and deserted it, and was showing something on his phone to the woman across the hedge. Both of them didn't look Singaporean; I'm guessing both of them were foreigners here to work to support their respective families. It was quite amusing actually; I wonder if it was legal (and safe) for him to park his truck like that.
Then as I walked across the bridge to the Botanic Gardens mrt, I saw a woman sitting on the steps of the overhead bridge, reading. I think it was a Bible or some other holy book, and she read in the way people do when they need to concentrate, by moving a pen across the lines of the paper as her eyes processed them. She didn't even notice when I turned to look at her. A vagrant, surely, but a purposeful one. She was searching in those moments for meaning, searching for insight to guide her path, searching like one who knows they must have something to fill up their soul. I wondered what she particularly needed that strength for, although of course the need for strength is something we all require and desire.
I really liked seeing them be human. Although they aren't natives, they too are people who are ruled to a great extent by their circumstances. They can't choose to suddenly apparate to wherever they want most in the world, and other than Sundays they perhaps have much to do that they have no flexibility to decide. Again, but for the circumstances that I and they have been placed in, we could trade places. So, it does make me relieved and glad that they are creating a home here, that they are finding meaning.
I do think that we as Singaporeans don't own this land at all. But for history's twists, we wouldn't be here at all and our circumstances could be vastly different. It's like when Pocahontas sings, "You think you own whatever land you land on" about the arrogant colonialists who try to claim title to whatever they see. But in property law, no one actually owns the material land, just a certain strata of land for a limited period of time. So here we are, all equal in our humanity, equal in our vulnerability, comrades in the great struggle of life. There is no real in-group or out-group; all our barriers are constructed by humans and maintained by humans and can be broken through. And in a lot of ways, it is right for us to break free of the fetters on our mind.
*
This relates to something I realized from the sermon yesterday. The pastor related an incident in a book, Their Darkest Hour by Laurence Rees. This book is written by a historian about 35 of his encounters over 20 years of researching and meeting people who lived at the time of the second World War.
Laurence Rees writes about a German woman who lived through Nazi Germany. She imagined her life to be filled with a sense of bourgeois contentment. Like many people, she simply wanted to live a quiet and reasonably comfortable life. When interviewed, she spoke with regret about the day her Jewish neighbour, a kindly and elderly woman, was forced to wear the yellow Star of David. But the Nazi state wasn't all bad, she thought. Though there was a dark side to it, nothing in the world is perfect. And it had its good parts. It allowed her to feel special, as an Aryan. Compared to Germany if it had not fought, and had been crippled by the cost of the losses imposed on it in the truce that ended the first World War, it wasn't the worst that could have happened. For her. After all of it, she spoke about it as though the bad was regrettable but excusable in light of the good. It was something she could live with.
But the pastor pointed out something that she'd missed. The German woman did not realize that all the good things which occurred to her were inextricably linked with the bad that were inflicted upon others.
The Nazi regime worked as an Us vs. Them, where the Them had to be dehumanised and demonised as a separate group, and the Us so content in protecting their own that they could think it was really not their concern nor their problem that the Them was suffering. Although we all have some limited power to change our circumstances, at least the power to spend our time and our voice and our life, we surrender our power when we choose to think we have nothing to do with the things around us that we observe, and that we acquiesce to. And so, the German woman did not realize that in that world she lived in, she could only feel that special as an Aryan and live that comfortably, on the pain and effort of others. On the distancing and persecution of others.
And this brought me back to this realization: When we ask to be treated as more special than others, when we ask to be told we stand above others, we cannot do so without others being lowered. Without others being trampled, and with us trampling them in our actions (even if we did not actively make the first decision to start this arrangement). It's not always that we should accept and continue to promote the situation we are brought into, as though our going along with it did not contribute to its maintenance. Because you do have that choice. So even though we all are tempted to wish for a life above the average, tempted to wish to be lucky and revel in our luck, we must know that this necessarily causes a tradeoff in the situation and status of others.
In the Christian context, the pastor told us to give up on our small ambitions and juvenile passions, that we laughably hang onto as though they are true passions. And this includes desires like wanting to be special. Desires for recognition and love and acceptance are not unacceptable in themselves, but they can be twisted when they are directed wrongly, hoping to be quenched in the wrong ways. We should not demand or accept that specialness should come from being a German or a Jew or a Singaporean or our status in society, but instead we would be more than adequately satisfied by the fact that we are all special and beloved and precious in God's sight. If we would give up our small ambitions and juvenile passions for the glory of God, the glory of Love Himself, we would be more rewarded in the end.
I do believe that life is a war, in which there is, in the long run, no sitting on the fence. We'll be faced with choices, that will mark our actions ever after unless we later make choices to turn back. As the woman said, "What can we do?" Once you're willing to compromise one neighbour, pretending you are worlds apart from the realities of the benefits you reap from this arrangement, it becomes easier to pretend you are not complicit in compromising the next and the next.
It's a personal struggle, that not one of us is exempt from. Again, being all human, we all share in the same fear that it'll be too difficult and that we won't be enough, and the same desire that we should just live comfortably and luxuriate in material bliss. The same temptation to enjoy what we have of life, without thinking too much. In the attempt to avoid this, all we can do is to ourselves strive to think clearly, to sort out the truth of our lives instead of willfully blinding ourselves, and to encourage each other and care for each other in the great journey, the arduous race.
Somehow, though we may fall at times, and life will seem bleak as more and more of those close and far fall away, I believe that it will be awesome in the end for those who use their choices well, when we are finally called to rest.
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