Thoughts after reading 127 Hours

People say that we're searching for the meaning in life. I don't think that's it at all. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our innermost being and reality., so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.
- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth


As I marvel at Aron Ralston's tenacity towards life, I can't help but to imagine myself in his situation. What would I do? How would I feel? Where would my hallucinations take me? Most of all, would I survive?

I must admit that I am one person who easily backs down when the going gets rough. Instinctively, I chicken out, I want to run away, I want to hide. Wait, perhaps the instinctive part is also a self-delusion, since these behaviours are learned and reinforced by my reactions to experiences. I doubt I'll have the courage and cool-headedness to go through the things that he did.

Recently I was just discussing with wl about the situation where we're thrown into a jungle. How well would we survive? Aron's account was a true demonstration of his grit, his strength and faith in himself. In the beginning I had difficulty following his very technical description and dismissed them as engineer blabber. But as I proceed further in his story I was hooked. It is precisely his rationality that helped him survived the most extreme circumstances. His ability to think up and pulley system with a force ratio of 6:1, his calculations of his survival chances, up to the decision making process of whether to drink his urine is weighed in a most clinical and distant way. He lived for so many days without food and water because he was able to pull himself apart from the situation and assess it rationally. Technicalities apart, the most important factor is the will to live. How much are we willing to sacrifice for our lives? Aron Ralston cut off his hand with a cheap multi-tool. He relied on his discipline and adrenaline rush to get himself out of the canyon. He did everything he could, because he loved the feeling of being alive.

How much could I say the same? The quote above which he also used in the book really forced me to rethink about my many attempts to define the meaning of life. I think I forgot that a necessary condition to that question is the ability to feel alive. There is no meaning of life if there is no life. Have I felt alive? When do I most feel alive?

Some food for thought.

Getting in touch with music

Finally got in touch (pun intended) with my record company, Touch Music after almost a year of haitus. It was a good session of getting to know the professionals, other writers like myself and of course to learn from each of them. I think i haven't focused on music at all since XQRJ, and it has been a good 10 months. It is also a good time to think about what i really want out of my life. Although being employed gives me a very comfortable sense of security, i find myself choosing to be more and more in a world of my own. This is ironic because the point of being employed is to get into society, know the rules of the adult world and learn to become a useful member of the society. Then why do i feel such a strong desire to pull away? Why do i feel more and not less disengaged as i interact with people?

This session kinda helps me to reorient my interests in life, and perhaps prioritize what really matters to me. When one of the lyricists listened to my song today, he remarked that he could strongly sense my desire for freedom and spiritual trancendance. This really struck me because i never thought that others could pick out my subconcious currents through my music. Even though eventually he said that this may not be suitable for the market, i was nevertheless thrilled. Yes i still need to work out my basics and improve but i feel excited just thinking about how i am channeling my creative energies to build something truly mine, something that can be appreciated by others and moulding my style and identity in the process. And this is what makes me truly engaged and happy. I find this feeling in music, i find it in literature. I discovered today how big a world the music industry is, yet how small is the inner circle of people involved. Yet i am one of them! I really should not waste this precious opportunity. I have 2 years left. Definitely need to work harder and smarter!

Purity

Where does the idea of purity come from?

I watched a video on the future of food, which discussed how future food may come form unconventional sources. (you may watch it here) While I am a little adamant about fly burgers and recycled food coming from our sewage, I can still imagine it being acceptable in the near future. But when the video started to talk about genetic programming, I got a little queasy. Yes, it is already acceptable now, thats how we got our seedless grapes and oranges and fatter melons and leaner meats, but still, the idea of artificial selection and playing god kinda scares me. Especially when we insert genes from another species into an egg. The video described how scientists injected genes from spiders into a sheep's egg, so that the wool generated will have the qualities of spiders's silk. While this may create stronger wool products, and has a huge potential in terms of bullet proof vests, climbing material, etc, I have no idea why it irks me just that bit.

Then it hits me, how did I get the idea that natural is better than artificial? Where did the idea of purity come from? I am not a Christian, so all the business about playing god shouldn't affect me this way, but somehow I still cling on to the idea of natural purity so stubbornly. I really wonder why.

that moment

A million thoughts sprinkled on my mind like water on a lawn. I feel this excruciating pain somewhere between my chest and my nose, as if the epicentre of this pain is somewhere outside of my body and is radiating towards my nose and chest. The weight of the pain is probably caused by a certain memory, or the memory of a certain sentiment somewhere in time.

I miss that moment terribly, and reading Norwegian Wood solidifies that. Somewhere, in Toru's loss I saw mine too, and we both wept. I felt terribly disturbed by the many things outside now, so much that I lose focus on my internal feelings. Why do I have to be afraid to want to feel what I feel?

I am so lost in this stream of consciousness, and nothing seems coherent or made any sense. My mind keeps racing back to that day, that moment, that lost moment. Because of that moment, I now have a stinging regret lodged in me. It was really nothing to be brave about, if I were really to take that opportunity, or not. But it was just a lost moment that I revisit every so often to contemplate, what if things turned out differently? Would I be happier or more confused or be living in shit now? And I found myself finding all possible ways to relive the sentiments of that moment. The past few mornings had me half-conscious in bed, dreaming and yearning for that moment to happen again. But it will never happen again. I have missed it, lost it, and that's probably what makes it so unforgettable and regrettable.

Norwegian Wood had probably awakened a part of me, the dreamy, desolated, decadent side of me. It may not be a good thing to be so involved in my own world now, given that I am merely stepping out to face the society. But the more I expose myself in the day, the more I needed to close myself up at night, and indulge in my own world. This is what's keeping me going, keeping my mind balanced, keeping my life on the mill. What if I decided to usurp this balance? What if I could never again come out of my own world? I worry and worry until I am so tired that I fall asleep, and wake up feeling like I'm in a parallel universe, where people are still people but there's something different, detached about them. And places are still places but its outlines make little sense to me. I wake up feeling like I have slept a million years and meanwhile the world has reborn, re-evolved, and redeveloped to the point that exactly matched my last waking memory.

And as I looked down at the last page I stopped, the whole world will turn normal again.