Logish Paradox

I’m sure you know how certain songs can bring back nostalgic memories of the past. Unexpectedly I came across the song, An Jing on Zhi Wei’s blog. This song represented an era of time when I was young and stupid, between the secondary school years 2004 and 2005. I was in a class of crazy idiots who loved mandarin music, so naturally I was exposed to the mainstream mandarin music of that time.

While listening to the song after half a decade has passed, I’ve contemplated my journey in life and realise how much older and wiser I’ve become. I’ll soon graduate from polytechnic and reach the crossroads to decide the path I should pursue.

And by now I know, once you choose your path and leave behind the crossroads, you can never turn back. The bonds with the people you once cared for will be forgotten, because they become the relics of your past. When I have the time to reminisce, honestly, I miss my secondary school friends. However, even if we meet up, the tides of time have washed away our past and it becomes a meeting of strangers.

Somehow, I wish I could turn back time and become 15 again. I was depressed and feared abandonment back then. I had a crush on a certain someone and I hated myself for it. Now I wish I had at then possessed the guts to live the life I wanted and trust myself more. That’s the thing… until we’re free, we will never know how significantly we limit ourselves by our beliefs and thoughts.

Yet I cannot regret the choices I have made up until now. If I hadn’t made mistakes nor felt the turmoil of melancholy, I wouldn’t  have the insight I have now. The Logen today would not have existed.

I’ve made up my mind to enjoy my youth while I still possess it. I don’t want to sit down as an old man in the future, regretting that I hadn’t lived life sensuously and wildly; appreciating the cerulean skies, tasting the scent of the night breeze, feeling the heat from the sun, dancing spontaneously to life’s rhythms. To appeal to the senses while they are at their peak and when I’m still alive and healthy.

Logen L.

We live in a world of uncertainty. Everyone hurts so badly that they’ve become compassion-less. Familiarity is comfort; selective reality is medicine to assuage the suffering.

Today, I’m here to renew my vow to reach my happiness, amid the uncertainty. I vow to reach my goals my way. I will forgive and be compassionate to even those who oppose me.

It doesn’t matter if I will take on a path less taken. No matter the difficulty. Even if there is little proof that my principles, ethics and path will enable me to succeed, I will push on. I will be the exception because I’m not mere statistics. I am Logen, the god of my own destiny. And I don’t give a fuck of what society expects me to do.

Happy new year everyone. I resolve to stick to my code of ethics and principles and my way (and path).

Logen L.

On my way home, I passed by three teenage hecklers. I was in an eccentric korean-styled outfit, while I passed those idiots. When I crossed the road after passing them by, one of them started chanting out: ‘homo… sexual… homo… sexual…’.

I had half the mind to stop in the middle of the road, turn towards them, glare and shout ’shut the fuck up!’. But I did not. As it was, I was on the road with my night vision impaired due to wearing non-astigmatism lenses. My verbal confrontation would surely result in a physical fight. I would have been at a disadvantage of having three person against one of me and my eyesight might not be sharp enough to take on three attackers.

While my Aikido is far from flawless, it is good enough to break someone’s arm or back when I execute  an arm lock or throw. I would gladly accept punches for the satisfaction of paralyzing those fucktards temporarily. Clearly, I’m not as peaceful a person as an Aikidoka ought to be. I’m not some eccentric person in the street that you can bloody pick on. Because of my past of being heckled in school for being less masculine, I get very affected and offended when people do such things.

On the note of what those hecklers chanted, I do not believe that homosexuals are sinners or deviants. They are normal individuals who seek love from the same gender. But we as a society, use words like ‘homo’, ‘fag’ and ‘gay’ to insult people and more recently, the word ‘gay’ is used to say that someone or something is stupid. Compassion and self-reflection dictates that we should look into ourselves. Will we accept it if someone uses our own names or identities as a way to insult others?

I’ll make this clear… I HATE it when people make discriminatory remarks/jokes on race, the way someone behaves and sexual orientation. You are disgusting if you do it. This applies to my friends as well.

Just because I keep quiet when discriminatory racial remarks are made on Indians, Malays and Bangladeshis, doesn’t mean I condone it. I find it a waste of time and breath to confront and enlarge narrow minds.

Logen L.

When you possess clarity in your thoughts and the direction in life, you assume that the clarity will last. However, this act of attaching yourself to clear thought, is the beginning of losing it. In order to see things as they are, we must let go of what we fear.

If we are able to calm our minds of fear, we’ll be shocked at how fear can aggravate an innocent situation. We are conditioned to face the good with pleasure and attachment; and the bad with fear and aversion. We must drop the illusion of good and bad as they are ultimately two sides of the same coin. Both good and bad should be faced with a calm objective mind. Fear taints clear thought. It instigates paranoia that totally blinds us from clarity. Blindness impairs us from taking action.

[ Aikido demonstration and free attacks ]

Sometimes, during Aikido training I’m required to defend against attacks, at normal speed, without knowing how the attacker will attack. Anticipating an attack results in lack of clarity, because most of the time, you won’t be able to anticipate an attack correctly. I have to empty my mind of anticipation and fear. This way I can truly see an attack for what it is; and not what I imagine. And my body has been able to respond to an attack without hesitation by blending with the attackers attack.

I realise the key to being calm and retain clarity is to accept that some of my fears may come true. In the case of an attack, it is the fear of being hit. By accepting those fears I can take action to minimise the impact. It beats attaching to my fears and allowing them to claim my sanity. As a martial artist, the moment you lose clarity and calm, you are dead. I suppose the same can be said of life.

Logen L.

[Joel, here's the song played on a piano]

I live in a house of silence. I walk around perpetually with a grumpy attitude so that you are used to it and you wouldn’t know when I’m melancholic. I wish to share my problems with you, but I cannot.

I wished you had supported me through those years of hell for me, instead of affirming my inferiority. Ever since, I no longer know how to trust people with things that truly matter to me. I create fantasies as morphin to the emptiness inside. Do you really know what matters to me as an individual? Or am I just a burden to you?

I hate to see other families laughing over dinner. Why can’t we have a conversation that doesn’t end up in a lecture about life. Why can’t we try something new as family, instead of insisting on the old ways, giving the pretext that money is an issue.

I’ve tried too hard in the past. I’ve already given up. Because I know, you will never listen to my words; even if I were uttering them while standing on the ledge of a building ready to jump to my quietus.

You know… financial issues was never the issue. I just wanted to know and hear that  you loved me and cared about my existence. I just wanted to bond.

When we grow up, we should stop believing in pipe dreams… I no longer believe…

Logen L.

Words from my lips are more than exhausted. They are needless.

Logen L.

Time and again, adversity has taught me to have compassion for another human being’s pain. Ignorance is the cause for all of the world’s problems. People live within their selective reality, seeing the world as how they want to see it. They dehumanise and disrespect fellow human beings and justify their fears by imposing selective reality on their victims.

At a time when my mind was purer, I would tell you to react to their actions with compassion. But my world has been and continues to be oppressed by these people. For which they oppressed, I cursed them to die. I hated them.

My mind had become unstable and I lost clarity in my thoughts. How can one be sane when his sense of self is clinging onto a thread, so close to death? Finally, I experienced the essence of hate and truly understood why people can be driven to hate and commit acts of violence.

When you crush a person’s hopes and dreams of creating their happiness in all entirety, it is as good as murdering this person. After all, when a person dies, he gives up his past, present and future.

You can be as certain as fucking hell, this person will fight for his life. Amidst the darkness, where he sees no light nor compassion, the person will turn to ignorance and paranoia. And this will sire hate. No one wants to hate. It is only out of desperation and desire to survive that he hates to motivate himself to live.

With the little clarity I’ve regained today, I’m relinquishing the hate I cling on to. Hate has a price. You poison your soul with perpetual pain by clinging on to hate. And by clinging on to hate, I’m as guilty for ignorance as the people who victimised me.

I now sincerely believe that compassion can bring about change and peace. Compassion allows us to see the human inside everyone, even within the monsters who are ignorant. It reminds us that even the worst human being has some good within them. And compassion has always been associated with the divine. I mean, do you attest that compassion, towards someone who intends to murder your existence, is an easy thing to do?

Logen L.