the reality of my non-existence

I left home more than 4 years ago and have been living a semi nomadic life. The thing about it is that I feel really comfortable with this insecured and wandering life... travel to many exotic places, meet wonderful people and live in amazing place... As uncertain as life is, I really enjoy every moment and appreciate everything that comes into my life, maybe because of it. And the most important feeling of all these, is that all these feel so natural! It feels weird to even say that it feels natural to be a normad.

However, if we look to the beginning of our human exitence (what we know), the early human beings are nomadic, then we became more land cultivators, so now our society is founded in this format and we are brought up to think that this is the only way of life there is.

I always thought that there is no other way but the way of our father and our father's father... but the problem is that I was never convinced and was always unhappy with what I was doing. I studied, got a good degree, found a good and promising job, but nothing could wipe away the emptiness that was gnawning at my inside. Making the decision to break away from the "reality" that I have known all my life was both difficult and easy; easy because I was ready to leave, difficult because I do not know the path that lays infront of me: the fear of the unknown.

I didn't like who I was because I felt that I was beginning to lose myself in the world, letting the society tells me who I was, trying to mould myself into the different boxes that society conditions us to comply. So I set out to search for myself, the essence of my being, not merely my identity.

But after taking the first step, the rest comes very easily. It was very hard at the beginning to try to establish myself. And just when I got things going for me, I had to leave. And the years of moving around have given me a lot of opportunity to meet interesting, simple and enlightened people but it also did not allow me to establish a permanent relation and that is one of the hardest. I have to be conscious of myself otherwise it is so easy to be drawn back into the vicious circle that society throws you into; money-work-expectation-pressure-etc; where everyone around you is worrying about their future, regretting about their past and missing out in the present. And now, I won't even cause a "beep" in the tangled radar of social tentacles; pension fund, social security, tax income, health care, etc. You can even say that I don't exist, a phantom, a shadow, a passerby in people's life.

But nothing feel more real to me than now.

Birthday wishes

What does birthday mean? People say that it's a day where you celebrate the day of your birth. But why this day? Why not celebrate everyday... because life is a continuous event, if you take away any single day between your previous and current birthdays, you would not have reached the current birthday. In my opinion, everyday is a special day... yes, we do like to commemorate days and events, that's socially constructed behaviour.

That said, being the first born child in my family, my birthdays were celebrate with pomp and glee. It was really normal for me to have a family dinner, a cake and candles on this day. But on my 21st birthday, I realised that nothing I could do could surpass all the birthdays I had ever had until then, so with a stroke of ingenuity, I decided not to celebrate my birthday at all. And who would have known that that decision 14 years ago is still in effect today.

Friends often ask me why I don't want to celebrate this day and the most common question the day after is "how did you celebrate it?" The question I want to ask is, why is it such a big deal? I know it is a special day, the day of our birth... isn't it equally important the day of our conception? And if we are surrounded by family and friends, then there is a good reason to gather and have fun. But if you are alone?

I have been living a rather normadic life for the last 4 and half years. I like this lifestyle but the only setback is that it leaves me pretty alone and lonely some of the times. I have friends around the world but not many close to me in terms of geographical distance. And because everything in my life now is so temporary, I find it hard to RELATE to people. It is easy for me to make quick friendship, especially when I am travelling. Everything is so temporary; we are only together for a few days so it is easy to just see the beauty and goodness of the other person. But when I stay in one place, I get to know a person better, the novelty starts to wear off and I start to REALLY get to know the person... the goodness, the defects, etc just like any other person. That's the difficult part for me. I became impatient with myself and with the other person.

There's always one thing that I think about and wish for on my birthday, and that's love. I have been really unlucky in love so far in my life. 35 years without a real taste of a lasting love, that's quite tough to bear. But the more I reflect on myself, the more I realise that I am not ready for love. Even if it comes, I might not recognise it because I am only on the look out for perfection, without realising that love has a defective side too.

And to understand and experience love fully, I have to embrace the perfection as well as the defect... this is my birthday wish...

To judge or not to judge

In respond to a discussion I had with a friend about bullfighting in Spain:

I understand what you are saying and why you are pressing the point. But I guess I didn't express myself very clearly and i think our understandings of the word "judge" are different. So I will restrain myself from using it..

Let's talk about bullfighting. I do not approve of it but it doesn't mean that I will go to the arena and start killing the people who are enjoying it. I do tell people that I don't like it and I don't think it's a sport nor an entertainment.. and if they derive pleasure from it (because of their tradition), then it's up to them.

Religion, I was a devoted Catholic and now I have seen the error of my behaviour in the past (condemning non christian to hell, etc), but I am not going to go to every Christian and tell them to leave that corrupted and controlling organisation. Because I know that no many people can do that, to just give up.. they need security, they need people to tell them what to do and they need people to assure them that when they die, there are better things awaiting them. (this derive from the hopelessness of present reality, but that's another topic we should discuss the next time)

I have always seen anti gay in the same league as racism. Both are things that you can't change and was condemned base on a certain idea and "teaching". So, of course I do not agree with it.. but will I judge it? Who am I to judge? if I take things into my own hand, i am no better than those gay-basher (because they take it into their own hand and forcing their idea upon the others)

Slavery, I strongly disagree with what they are doing.. In my opinion, this is wrong, very wrong.. However am I right as well to go over there and kill all the people whom I think it's wrong? I think that's what America is doing in Iraq.. because America feels that dictatorship isn't right (which I think it isn't too) and they decided to take things into their own hand and here we have our current iraq war. Are you in favour of the Iraq war then? I surely am not.

All I am saying is that, we all have our point of view, it is ok for us to have it and even to judge (i had to use it) others. But when we go beyond our bondary, we lost the very purpose of our action. Maybe I am a coward.. or maybe I am just a person who believe in diversity.

We are looking at issue from this point of view that is generally agreed upon in the modern world, such as Human Right, and all the other rights. So it is easy for us to "judge" things that are against them as wrong. And because of this, a lot of minority behaviour are therefore wrong as well. But what if, Islam is the world religion and Iraq or Iran is the superpower, don't you think that the reverse is true then?

Maybe I am not as noble as a lot of people.. but I do believe in different point of view.. and to understand it before condemning (that's different from judging)

time

Einstein proposed that time is the fourth dimension. I can perceive the 3 dimensions world that we live in, but it is difficult for me to imagine a fourth dimension. That maybe because it is not something that I can visualise. We tend to only believe what we can see.

But unlike the other 3 dimensions, time cannot be manipulated nor charted. Or can it? Throughout human history we have been trying to manipulate and measure this element.

What is time then? Time is considered a kind of linear progression measured by the clock and the calendar. That it is unchangable and constantly moving. With no regards to anything else. It will not slow down when we are sad (though we might feel it it does) nor speed up when we are happy. It keeps moving from past to future. George Orwell once said "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."

Is there such thing as present then? Isn't it true that whatever just happened is already in the past and whatever is about to happen is still in the future? Is present the nanosecond THIS particular nanosecond? By wearing a watch and asking "what time is it?" do we therefore possess the present? There is no such thing as present. It is like trying to make and incision right where the past meets the future.

How about the past and the future? The past is something that has gone and the only way we know that it existed is through our memory. But our memory are prone to subjective influence. Did you ever realise that some of your old memory seems to be sweeter than the actual event? Then is the event real since it differs from the memory we have of it? Or the memory a lie since it doesn't coincide with the real event? How can we trust history? It is said that "history" is written by the winner. So there is no such thing as "real" history and therefore, no such thing as "real" past, either.

On the other hand, future is not even here yet. It is nothing but a hypothetical concept. How do you know there is such a thing before it actually happen? For example, we may have plan to do something in the future, say tomorrow. But what if we die before tomorrow. Doesn't that make tomorrow nothing but another illusion?

Then is the concept of "past, present and future" is nothing but an illusion that we created to lie to ourselves that we actually can possess time? This is what we want to do, right? To possess time. We run around all our lives, chasing time, complaining that we don't have enough time, etc.

Have we ever thought that time could be viewed in other way? That time could be a cyclical concept. The Indian mythology believes in the beginning point of time is also the ending point. In another word, there is no beginning nor end of time. This view is also echoed by Buddhism and other oriental philosophies. It is evident everywhere. For example, everyday begins as the sun rises and ends as the sun sets; even yearly seasons move in cycle: spring, summer, autumn, winter... spring.

What does that mean to us if we do see time as cyclical rather than linear? Would we then not put so much importance on lost time? Would we then learn to appreciate each moment more? or less?

There is no such thing as "time". It is nothing but an idea for us to try to understand and to grasp the meaning of changes. Be it linear or cyclical, all we ever have is THIS moment of conciousness.

nothingness

Ever contemplate what is it like to be "nothing"? or to be more exact, to be in a state of nothingness. Being so used to be surrounded by "something", the concept of nothingness is hard to grasp.

"Big Bang", a theory that argues the concept of our current somethingness comes from nothingness. It was difficult for me to understand this theory at the beginning not because of my catholic background but because in the formation of my thought, in my formative years, the concept of nothingness was never entertained nor do I consciously know its absent. Our perception requires the delineation of one thing from another to function.

What is nothingness? Is it the lack of something? the absence of existence or the existence of nonexistence? Nothing is such a simple, day to day word. But do you really understand when we say "there's nothing here"? It is a strange thing to say because by saying it, it already implies the existence and the being of the speaker. Linguistically speaking, it is another paradox, by using the verb to be "is", the speaker is already creating the existence of "nothing". There is no such thing as the "existence" of "nothingness", because they contradict each other. Nothing is not define by being nor by existing, it is the absence of it.

Nothingness is therefore absolulte .

And in the world of nothingness and absolute, there is no being. So, being a being, it is therefore impossible for us to experience nothingness.

sense of belonging

What does it mean to belong? Every one of us was born with an instinct to be part of a community, that's human nature; or we could call it natural instinct. We belong to our family, to our community, to our circle of friends, to our culture and society... and this sense of belonging even extend to something less intrinsic, such as clubs and associations.

Why do you feel the need to belong? In this sense, we are not very different from other animal. We derived our identity through this sense of belonging. By belonging to a group, a community, it tells us who we are. If I belong to an Asian society, then my identity is an Asian, it completes me as I have got to feed this psychological, mental and emotional needs of mine. We are who we are by definition of the people we surround ourselves with; we see this clearly in some of the Hollywood movies: the jocks, the cheerleaders, the nerds, etc.

Let's bring this idea home a little. Our identity is intrinsically tied to our family. It seems that there is no way to escape this bloodline; for example, my surname is my father's surname, in some culture, for example, the latin ones, the children also takes on the mother's surname. How many times have we heard "so, you are so and so's daughter/son! You look so much like your father/mother." As we grow up, we build our identity through belonging to every aspects of society and humanity on the blank pages of ourselves, and after 20 or so odd years, we become who we are today. The question I want to ask at this point is, are we happy about who we are?

Growing up with mix parentage, and in a society where it practice preferencial treatment to a race that I don't belong to help me to cultivate this sense of "never quite belong". And on top of that, being gay and catholic. I was pretty involved in the church activity and that really gave me a sense of belonging. But at night, when I switched off the light and the rest of the goody feeling, when it was just me and the very inner self of me, I felt really empty, because that is this part of me that wants to be recognised and released but my belief, or "my belonging" did not allow me to do so because by acknowledging my sexuality, it defied my belief. These 2 parts of me cannot coexist. So, for a long time, I was in perpetual conflict and denial. This as time goes by, feed and strengthen this sense of "not belonging".

So when I decided to leave my home, my country and my family. It is with an unconscious effort to find myself. Not to belong to any society, but rather, to find out who am I by not belonging to any. To find this intrinsic me, this me that isn't defined by the culture that I grew up in, by the family that nurtured and fostered me, and by the society that told me what to and what not to do. But, you know what? This is actually a paradox. Because we as a human being, living in this relative world, our meaning are defined by others. Who we are are define by who they are not.

Once, I walked through a park in Lisbon and saw old people sitting around and family strolling, I was strucked by a sudden sense of alienation. I felt that this "picture" in front of me doesn't belong to me; or should I say, I can never belong to this picture; the perfect example of human society.

From that day on, I accepted my identity of a traveller, a wanderer, a nomad. An outsider within this lonely planet, an alien among humanity.

life as movie

10 or 11 years ago, I watched a very interesting and relatively unknown movie, "Before Sunrise". It was a very simple movie about a backpacker who met a stranger on a train and they started chatting and decided to stop in Vienna and spend the night walking through the its enchanted streets before they had to go on their own way the next day. There wasn't anything spectacular, but the simplicity and exotic setting has imprinted very deeply in my heart and mind. As an adolence, I had wished for this kind of intense and passionate experience in a foreign land meeting someone who capture my heart and my imagination. Something magial.

Last summer, I was backpacking in Easter Europe for 2 months; it was an intense and awesome experience. And in the unspoiled and edgy land of Romania, I met someone. We spent 3 intense days together, the day I had to leave was one of the hardest thing I have had to do. As my bus pulled away and seeing the person I 'love' slowly disappearing from my sight and the uncertainty of whether we would meet again, tore through my heart. In the movie, the 2 protagonists made a pack to meet again in a year's time, but one of them didn't turn up. Life is like a movie, after I left Romania and we started chatting on the net and things grew from mere infactuation to something more serious; promises were made, expectations were born. Instead of waiting 1 year, like the movie, I have only to wait 4 months. When the day got closer, the anxiety grew stronger. The days leading up to it, I felt the distance. Nothing like the physical distance that seperate us; but a distance that could not be cross with any boat, nor traverse through by any vehicle, nor reach by any plane; a distance that chill the heart and warm the cheeks. The date approached and he wasn't there...

Devastated? That is an understatement. I know well enough never to put expectation on a night of passion and a long distance relationship. But I've never been the one to conform and I try to believe that there is 'hope', there is always hope. But non-conformity doesn't guarantee love.

What is love? It is just mere feeling? How is it possible that a feeling could evoke such extreme reaction? At one moment, it sends you heavenwards, through the clouds, to mingle with the stars and bath in the moonlight. And the next moment, you go through hell, heart rip out with red stingy tears.

9 years after "Before Sunrise", the director and the 2 actors decided to make a sequel, and so "Before Sunset" was born. In the movie, the 2 protagonists chanced upon each other in Paris 9 years after they first met. And walking through the Bohemian streets of Paris, they chatted and chatted, and love was reignited.

I wonder if, like the movie, I have to wait 9 years to continue this love. Is there such thing as "true love waits"?

As I wander through this land of nowhere, I wonder if this Chinese saying "Life as movie, movie as life" is true...