Weekend Reflections

Saturday was spent at Amsterdam, with visits to the Anne Frank House as well as a boat ride along the canal networks. There was supposed to be a 'GPS' tour around Leiden on Sunday, but the students vetoed the idea in a liberal and democratic manner. Most went off to Rotterdam or Utrechet. Others, like myself, decide to just spend the afternoon chilling and spacing out in Leiden.

While sipping my hot chocolate and cappucino by the river, I was reflecting and thought that the exchange thus far has been a very powerful tool in unlocking the self-imposed obstacles on reaching my ideals, dreams and goals. To put things in context, it seems fashionable these days for the European graduates to take a year or two off to work in an NGO in a 'Far East' place. For instance, my dutch roommate, Abram, who has just graduated from his Masters degree, is going off to China in August to work for a year. Others expressed similar interests to do an overseas internship for peanuts just to detach themselves from the european lives that they have been accustomed to, and getting down to the ground level to fight for human rights in Asian NGOs. The Asian friends have also been very single minded about pursuing scholarships to do their Masters in Europe or other parts of the world, and they seem to be very resourceful and determined to scout for post graduate scholarships, despite the language barrier and so on and so forth.

Their passion and perseverance have thought me that there is really a world out there for all sorts of possibilities, and there is pretty nothing much in stopping myself from reaching these possibilities. For a moment (well actually a night), I was entertaining the latent thought of doing DTS/YWAM in Thailand for a year or two, or even joining an NGO somewhere in Indochina, and be pretty much forgotten by the people back in Singapore. Okie, not quite forgotten, cos there is always the power of internet to keep in contact, but by and large, you are pretty much forgotten because the fast paced city life tends to induce amnesia in the minds of many, such that social circles are essentially spheres of communciation to keep social memories alive. To be honest, I think I am comfortable with being forgotten in that sense, but I realize that my problem is not about being forgotten, but forcing myself to forget certain narratives and dispositions, to pack it up and go, just so that the 'road that is not taken' will indeed be the defining 'difference' in my life.

Do choices always present themselves in a binary fashion; the road that divides that leads to a all or nothing, a yes or no; to move without the benefit of hindsight, and faith as the only means of foresight? Maybe there is that idealistic streak in me, but I think my different ideals aren't mutually cooperative at all. I don't have an answer to my mutually exclusive ideals, and I probably won't want an answer anyway, but actually I do know the answer. So maybe I'm living behind a veil of ignorance; like what I've concluded with a hungarian friend, the everday performance of standing behind the veil of ignorance would just make me incredibly sweet and stupid at the same time. Prosit to the complexity of mutually exclusive ideals!