The latest article about Amos Yee, written by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian (possibly the most perplexing but pleasingly alliterative name I’ve ever come across) for Buzzfeed was riddled with the usual misconceptions about Singapore. But her observations about the boy felt strangely relatable to me.
“Yee struck me as lost. He was clearly capable of expressing complex arguments, but woefully unaware of the challenges that lay ahead in the real world.”
That seems, to me, a wearily familiar problem with children these days. I have taken to pointing out that if one isn’t intelligent enough to understand the limits of one’s own intelligence, then perhaps he/she isn’t really that intelligent after all. But as they bristle and retaliate by bringing their definitive judgement to bear on me, I recognise that many kids these days are imbued with a strong sense of self-dignity that I never had the luxury of having. They are smart. Smart enough to have largely avoided the pains of a bruised ego. They’re not about to endure it now over the likes of me.
There is room for optimism though. This is an easier problem to overcome than the reverse circumstance. Intelligence is a gift. But wisdom and knowledge can at least be attained.
While we’re on the topic of self-dignity..
Home wouldn’t be home if there wasn’t at least an overt reminder that whatever worth I have managed to accrue for myself out in the world can always be easily rendered negligible here, where I have never adequately repaid the debt of being given life and blood. Three times in my life I have collapsed out of fatigue or injury. I was taken to task on all three occasions for failing to fulfill my responsibilities. Being unwell requires an acknowledgement I do not have the dignity of getting. Because doing all I can is not the same as doing enough.
What sort of impact this has in the long run remains to be seen. I have grown meeker; kindness truly cannot be taken for granted, and it may be the most precious thing to gift (after all, who can ever say they’ve more than enough of it in their lives?). But there is also the knowledge that we work our lives with whatever freedoms we get to have. I don’t get to be ill. But I still get to die. And I will make sure I do that on my terms when my time comes.
Or so I hope. I fear my time coming too soon an awful lot these days.
Weapons are weapons
Kali Majapahit, as a proponent of Filipino martial arts, has changed a lot since the last time I trained with them. It seems, to me, that their teachings were purer in the past. It probably all comes down to economic factors. There generally isn’t enough demand for actual combatants in the world to sustain a viable commercial business, and the nature of (largely) weapons-based martial arts makes them less conventionally attractive to Joe Public. Changes must be made to make it more fun, bells and whistles must be added to glamourise it. A system that, however effective, must also concern itself with stylistic aesthetics has to be formed in order to mask the fundamental insecurity behind all weapons combat: that weapons is about efficient killing, and you can still very likely be killed no matter how well trained you are.
Since my first foray into weapons with la verdadera destreza (which was so obscure back then that my teachers in school thought I had made it up when I mentioned it in my testimonial), I have come across so few people who understand what it is like to fight with weapons, the deadly unpredictability of it all, and the mindset that comes with such an awareness. Still, I s’pose this is no bad thing. It surely reflects poorly on any society that includes carrying out armed violence as common knowledge. Peace may make us weak, but who doesn’t want peace really?
Softly Questioning 