the meanings we breathe onto things. 9:40 am

Yee Hung recently blogged about the meanings we give things; cancer could either send you into depression or could inspire you to winning the greatest biking race few times over. How true that how we see things is the way we breathe meaning onto them.

A Y-shaped twig was simply Nature's litter until someone felt that it could be the basic structure to build a catapult to destroy the enemy's walled cities. A single object, a single act or non-act can mean different things to different people. This is because each of us has a unique perspective.

1. There are different ways to see things.

1. Each person has a unique perspective.

Therefore, each person has a unique, and likely differing, way of seeing things.

Even if that difference in the way we see things is very small, it is still a difference nonetheless. Given it is inching close to 3am in the morning with my next exam in a day, I will make this brief.

This reflection has made me come up with possibly 2 musings:

(1) Because everyone has a unique view of seeing things, we must always be eager to listen to others and their views. Because no matter how convicted on something, there is always something you possibly you may have never thought of, a perspective you never knew existed. That's why some splashes of paint on a white canvas can be what my nursery teacher may have said as "untalented child" and can also be Pollock's rise to international stardom as an artist.

(2) Because we give meaning to the things around us, it seems there is no objective "truth"; each of us has our own "truths". And because of this, it is so difficult for us to be so firm that our interpretation is always the right one and others have the wrong one. Sure, theirs may not be right, but that doesn't mean yours is right either.

As I said in (2), I could be totally wrong here. I could be totally right. What say you?


Uncle T

how cruel can it get? 7:01 pm

All it takes is one slip. And your climb to the pinnacle is as good as gone. You will likely never get to the top. It is all so precarious; you look at that one crucial step, the ground can either hold or slip under your feet. Its one or the other, you make it or you don't.

So often we hope, just hope, and pray, that we will make that step and the ground holds. It keeps our dream alive, to get to the top. It either holds or it doesn't.

And then it doesn't. Oh God. Suddenly the ground from which you started looks far closer than the summit you've been working towards. It just doesn't make sense. But that is the reality. It could have either held or not. It didn't.

How cruel can it get? Very. But you have to push on to the top. Even if you don't reach the top, I will die trying. It won't be easy, but you have got to keep pushing.

Everyone makes mistakes, takes the wrong step. But the difference between the good and the great is how we respond to these mistakes. Oh boy.

Oh God.


Uncle T