A Blessed Man

There comes a time in a man’s life, where he realizes that he is who he is as not a personal effort, but as a combined effort of self and those people around him. All that affects him – the good, the bad, and the ugly – all but witholds him the experiences that he learns from. From life’s experiences – should he learn from it – he grows, like a phoenix, flaming out from the ashes, or like a snake, shedding its old skin, bursting into his newer self. There comes a time, when he realizes he is where he is today, thanks to everyone around him.

↑To be read in Mohinder Suresh’s or Morgan Freeman’s comforting voice.

So, as you can see from the picture above¹, I celebrated my birthday recently (I randomly allocate dates for my birthday, so it varies from year to year²).

So, 21³ years later, I look back on my long lived life, and sometimes wonder, how the frak I got here. Obviously my life wasn’t a train wreck like many people out there, it is in fact, by comparison, very smooth. Not that I am complaining, but it is uncanny that my life follows such a smooth path⁴.

True, there have been ups and downs in my life as well (the worst I ever felt was in 2005, when I got kicked out from a scholarship to study in UK for having lame A-Levels results⁵) but it seems that every down is almost immediately followed by an up. In 2005, just when I was feeling like my life has gone absolutely down the gutter – hopeless and all, there was an angel, in form of the Pretty Swallow who got me off my bum and start anew.

Throughout all my life, I’ve always known people who love me – my parental units, my sibling unit, my great friends – most notably cfgt, kl, ayjk, jien, et al with whom I’ve been through so much, and they had all stood by me; I’ve known people whose love for me was fleeting – of which Pretty Swallow had the largest impact. I know someone who loves me romantically right now – Silkrose… and I love them all – that I’d be willing to die for them.

Then there are the very very close and good friends – people like my housemates, Tou, Cat et al., who are willing to tolerate me for all the weirdness that I am. I have several very bad habits that normal people cannot stand. For one, I unconsciously talk down to people⁶. I’ve angered so many people, had a relationship broken up over it before, and yet, these people these very close friends – they tolerate me⁷.

Everywhere I went, there are people to intellectually feed me. I’ve had good debate partners, people who can spur me mentally, make me get off my lazy arse and start thinking – people like cfgt, Aaron, Elanor, Eliezer, my dad and even past verbal sparring partner stringfellow. The people who opened my mind to the vast amount of knowledge – my professors, and whoever who wrote a readable good paper – these people shaped the way I think, shaped the way I see the world, through very clinical, objective eyes.

And then there are the people who are sheer geniuses whom I work with on a daily basis – people like Zybler, Ruben or wK. My life isn’t complete without them. Very much like the intellectual sparring partners, these people turn me on intellectually, force my brain to work to keep up with them.

Of course, there is a need to mention a group of people whom I hold very dearly to my life – people who consider me their enemy, or people who have hurt me in the past⁸. I guess, without you, I wouldn’t have learnt a great deal of lessons. I’ve learnt that the best of friends can deceive one another, and create even the most elaborate of lies for personal gain. But most importantly, I’ve learnt to let that go. I trust a person fully, and it is up to them if they wish to backstab me. Not because I don’t hurt, but because anything would just be yet another lesson in the great teaching called life. Nonetheless, I shall still trust those who chose not to trust me.

If you ask me, if I were living in some sort of paradise, I’d reply, yes. My life, by comparison, is relatively devoid of hardship. I may see everything through rose-tinted glasses of optimism⁹, but I am more knurd now than ever. In fact, I am so knurd that you’d have to knock a couple of pints into me before I start seeing things the way a normal human would see. It is from this knurdness¹⁰ that one realizes that one isn’t the cause of one’s existence – rather, it is the cumulative effects of everyone that is and was with me.

Obviously those who know me intimately would know that this isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way. This isn’t the first time that I realize that my life is pretty rosy and start counting my blessings. But this is the first time I am publicly voicing it this way. In the past, due to some misguided superstition¹¹, I had always feared that my good luck, my good karma, or my blessesness (or whatever suits your belief) would run out should I be publicly aware of this. It’s silly, but yes, even I fall for humanly superstition. But at this moment, I really feel I am indeed the luckiest person in the world, the most blessed of blessed men.

And I know this is not my job alone. No, I am not attributing it to a Singular Entity (aka the Invisible Pink Unicorn, the Great TiTS, the FSM or Jehovah). Rather, I am attributing who I am today to all the people who have made me. I like the way I am, and I want to thank all those who consciously and unconsciously built me. Despite the many references to me (yes, that’s rather selfish), this blog entry is dedicated to those who have shaped me. The experiences contributed to me, good (like falling in love) or bad (like falling out of love) has made me what I am today. Here. Now.

And I am content. If I were to die today, I’d die with a smile, my only regret being I didn’t do enough to change the world for the better. Yes, it sounds lofty, but this is what I seriously believe in – that a few of us¹², me included, can change the world for the better – so suck on it.

I believe that I’m blessed with good karma, and a road so far without much obstruction. And there is nothing more I want to do right now than to thank each and everyone in my life whom I’ve encountered.

↓ To be read with Mohinder Suresh’s or Morgan Freeman’s soothing voice

The blessed man stands alone. To cynics, his voice are but pleas for attention, but look deeper and one’ll find that one is, truly blessed. One can only hope that the blessed man, upon finding his sources, does not slack into complacency, but begin a new chapter – one that will benefit everyone.

Perhaps that time is coming.

1. I must congratulate Cat who imparted her own image in drawing Hiiragi Kagami – it’s really cute [↩]
2. most of my birthdays fall on April 31st, or February 29th on non-leap years. Other times it falls on some irrational date like March 2.71828th or some 31i-st December  – it just goes to tell you that my random number generator sucks. Note to self: use Yuzoz next time, but I bet it’ll vomit out 17 instead. [↩]
3. I stop aging at 21, so don’t ask my age [↩]
4. by stating this, am I doing a Rincewind? Will The Lady still watch over me if I voice my awareness of such phenomenon? I bet you none of you would get the reference here, except Hashie [↩]
5. and to make things worse, I got that scholarship over someone who had better results than me in the first place – in short, I felt like a giant asshole [↩]
6. its called arrogance – apparently I subconsciously think everyone else inferior to me in mental capacity [↩]
7. though I noted the only thing that most people absolutely cannot tolerate is my whistling [↩]
8. which up to current count, numbers 5 [↩]
9. which is called self-deception, btw [↩]
10. as opposed to drunkedness – spell drunk backwards if you don’t get what I mean [↩]
11. refer to the Rincewind and The Lady reference [↩]
12. in my list: Hiro Nakamura, Hiro Nakamura, Peter Petrelli (provided he doesn’t decide that something villainous is good this season), cyborg-Gandhi etc [↩]