What were they even thinking of?!

Lately, many have asked, 'What was he/she/they thinking? ' I do not believe they are expecting an answer from me. Perhaps they expect me to nod, quietly agree or squeak out some filler words like hmm..., not to react, disagree or object.

"What was he thinking? He had such a nice family, wife and beautiful kids. And gave up all that for a young chick?"

"He had everything going here. But that was not good enough. He had to sell off everything and root himself in a foreign land. Look at him now. What was he thinking?"

"In school, my best friend gave me a bar of soap. A bar of soap! Can you imagine? What was she even thinking of? ...that I stink?" 

It is not our business to judge others. We are only in a position to tell if we walk a mile in their shoes. Everything they do must have been debated internally with some soul-searching and introspection before making decisions. All the dos and don'ts must have been viewed from all angles, especially when it involves life-changing choices. Sometimes it is a calculated gamble. Other times, it may be desperation or the threat of the unknown. 

One must remember the decisions made at the heights of hormonal deluge in the spring of youth when the affairs of the heart supersede rational thinking. The ability to rationally weigh the pros and cons gets lost in emotion. Not to forget that as life becomes more bogged down by the strains of modern life, a clear mind is becoming an increasingly rare commodity. Decisions made by a deranged mind, assaulted by birth traumas, childhood traumas, genetic aberrations or pharmaceutical alterations also impair rational decision-making. 

Many resort to religions or gatekeepers of religions to make life-altering decisions, assuming that the path most travelled will be devoid of thorns and pebbles. How about invoking the powers of seers and the spirits of the dead? They could guide us. And astrology and the gravitational forces of celestial bodies that control our moods and fate…?

Now, with so many variables, I wonder if many of our actions are mere reflexes that bypass the higher centres. We work on impulses, outsource them to others or follow the crowd. Or maybe they already have something good going for them. They had assessed everything and had a ready plan going for them. Our assessments do not mean anything to them.

But then, one cannot help but question what they were thinking of when people aged 60-something, 70 or even 90 who live on borrowed time with one foot on the grave are hellbent on disturbing the peace. Rather than leaving a mark on the right side of history, they insist on the destructive and divisive way. They justify their action by quoting sacred texts and traditions and wanting to continue the struggles of their ancestors who did not know much. Undoubtedly, the present generation must be wiser. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

A test of faith?

There Mohammad was all up cheery in the morning. One more week, and he will be off back to his hometown. His sister was to get married, and he needed to earn extra cash to spend with his childhood friends back home.

Off he went answering the requests as the e-hailing app requested. The Klang Valley sun was getting hotter as the day went on. By 2 p.m., he thought he had enough. He would do one last delivery and call it a day. For his latest job, he had to ride to Shah Alam to deliver some foodstuff.

“Waze sends me through Elmina to reach, okay!” He told himself. “After that, I can call a day! After all, it’s his childhood friend Amin’s birthday.”

He was just reminiscing all his times from kindie to adulthood. After losing Amin to the many gruelling challenges in life, they rekindled their friendship through a mutual friend. They just did not have enough of each other. Stories of so many years cannot be completed in a single session. Tonight they plan to continue where they had stopped.

“What is that?” He asked himself as he spotted a white shadow on his rear mirror. He was just about to turn around to see for himself what the heck the white object in the sky was.

Boom!!! Before he could even open his mouth in awe, the white object came directly at him and hit him right smack. Wham!!! Even before he realised what hit him, he was dead.

That is how life is. This is a recreation of a freak accident where a Grab rider was hit by a private plane that went off course and crashed on a highway in Elmina, Shah Alam. Life is so unpredictable. Which motorcyclist. in his wildest dream, would be on the lookout to avoid a stray plane when he is riding on a Malaysia highway. It is a question of wrong place, wrong place.

JAL715 McDonnell Douglas DC8 aircraft
34/69 passengers and 8/10 crew died.
Tokyo - Singapore (via KUL)

Here is Mohammad doing all the right things, leading an honest life, then this. If there is a just divine force supervising all lives on Earth, it is undoubtedly doing a lousy job at it. The seemingly evil beings get scot-free, only to continue doing what they do best with impunity. People have the most diabolical answers for this. God loves the pure so much that He wants to keep him close, and living life on Earth is full of aches and pains. So death is a much-wanted relief from it all. Really?

Purists will say God works in mysterious ways our nimble minds would not comprehend. They tell us to look at the bigger picture of His greatness, whatever that may mean. Then, a group will quickly hurl insults of lack of piety after scrutinising his past, as if he is qualified to cast the first stone. This is as ridiculous as blaming natural calamities on human behaviour, e.g., decadence and earthquakes.

Yet another group will end all questions by invoking the law of karma. As if something intangible like sins of past lives can be argued, it essentially douses the amber of the need to find an answer.

But the flame of curiosity does not extinguish so quickly. In yet another revelation, somebody discovered a similar plane crash in the same vicinity some 46 years previously. Netizens will be engrossed in correlating these two events from all loose ends until another breaking news breaks ground. Then they will lose interest.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Be careful what you wish for!

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Director: Jon Watts

I was under the impression that the Universe moves along and things happen along its path. Whether events occur by pre-determined means or just by chance, for example, by a mere flutter of the butterfly wings, is anybody's guess. Everything goes on with a pre-set sequence despite all the randomness and the chaotic soup it portrays. 

The question is whether everything is pre-determined or it can be changed willfully. If events were pre-determined, nothing we can do changes Nature's course. So why bother to pray and hope that God will change things. A minor change in the complex order would just cause everything to crumble like dominos. If something can be altered at will, then the next course of events should be intelligence, not prayers.

One is reminded of the battleship dilemma here. A sea battle needs battleships. Tomorrow, there will not be a battle if the Admiral does not send a battleship. So, the question of whether a sea battle will take place tomorrow cannot be fate. The grand finale results from multiple 'what-ifs' and 'choices' made along the way that culminated in the showdown. 

"Shit happens all the time; deal with it. It's not the shit we face that defines us; it's how we deal with it." said a wise person.

In this outing, Spiderman finds out that his secret identity is revealed. The public is furious with the damage he had caused during his crime-busting activities. Specifically, Spiderman @ Peter Parker and MJ are vilified by the Daily Bugle and J. Jonah Jameson. On top of all that, Parker, MJ and his friend, Ned, all fail to gain entrance to MIT. Hoping to change all these, Spiderman approaches the mystic, Dr Strange. Change did not happen but not without consequences. It opened the floodgates of many multiverses and villains of those multiple alternative universes. To confuse things further, Spidermen of those universes also got drawn in. The rest of the story is about maintaining order after curtailing all those villains and their nefarious ambitions.

The lesson learnt here is that nothing just happens out of the blues. They are the combined effects of actions and inactions. Like they say about the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the testimony of one's resolute is in how he deals with adversities.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Future, Who writes it? You or the stars?

The birthplace of Jane and Benjamin Franklin.
Jane would live here for most of her life while
Benjamin would leave to pursue his apprenticeship.
(brainpickings.org)

Heard a podcast recently on one of the American founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin. As is well known, he emerged from a humble beginning, of a son of a poor candle and soap maker, to propel himself away from the clutches of poverty, to pull himself up with his boots strap even though he could not afford boots. Benjamin, a polymath, later became a printer, a master inventor, a diplomat, established the mail service and had a hand in drafting the Declaration of Independence.

He was self-taught. Together with his favourite sister, Jenny (out of 16 other siblings), they used to teach each other. Then, Benjamin left his home to work in a printing press run by his brother by a twist of fate. One thing led to another, and he left the job. He later managed to establish himself as a printer. In his printing company, he took many government contracts, including printing notes. In those days, paper was made from rags. Franklin used to advertise in his newspaper for rags for his mill. The rags eventually were made into money, enriching him tremendously. This ultimately coined the phrase 'rag to riches', which we still use today.

Jenny was not as lucky as her brother. Married at 15 to an older man who was a slave to the bottle and an underachiever, her world revolved around being her nanny to the result of her 22 pregnancies, keeping the family afloat amidst her husband's numerous failed business ventures. Nevertheless, Jenny and Benny continued corresponding over the years.

Two siblings started on the same footing, but both ended up in different ends of society. In one of the letters, Jenny mentioned, many things in life are beyond our control. Things just happen.

We may think we have it all covered. Nothing can go wrong. There are Plan B and even Plan C. Just when you think it is going to be alright, bam, it hit you. Things beyond your control hit you in your face, catching you off-guard. Murphy's law shows your fallibility and puts you in your rightful place. Embark Peter's Law, find your right footing.

Inked for life?

They say the signature can turn your life line. In the Tamil proverb, it reads (உண் கையெழுத்து தலை எழுத்தையும் மாற்றும்; or  உங்கள் கையொப்பம் உங்கள் விதியை மாற்ற முடியும் ); literal translation: your hand line [signature] can change your headline [fate]. The Indians believe that on the inner aspect of our skull, our lifeline or our destiny is written.

Just like how a game of dice became the change maker of the propriety of a kingdom, with a literal stroke of the pen, a prince can be a pauper. I vividly remember this mantra frequently being uttered by my elders during my childhood.

Early in my working life, I met a colleague who dragged life wearing a perpetual remorseful look and carrying on his shoulders a mountain and guilt and regrets. In his days of naivety when a good friend is one whom one could enjoy a good drink, he had stood guarantor, or rather, inked his signature above the dotted lines certifying what may that he would stand in front of his friend (guarantee) that the payment due to the bank is paid in full. Paid, he had to do, when his drinking buddy decided to go AWOL just a couple of months upon receiving the loan! The guarantor's plea of 'just signing for formality' and 'helping out a friend' was mocked upon by the fat bankers and men in the robe behind his back. Threatened by the possibility of bankruptcy, left with Hobson's choice, my colleague spent a good many years to come out clean off the black list. He paid dearly for his cavalier attitude at the expense of job promotion and providing for the family.

There is a reason why people of yesteryears took plenty of pride in perfecting their signature. They try to make it appear regal and a black ink is usually used to make it authentic. The ink on paper is worth a person's life or a nation's history.It is not a mark that gets washed away by time.

The go-getter and the waiter?

I have been in the company of many grown men. That does not sound right, does it? The main agenda of union may vary from group to group. Some try to relive their loss of youth, other of the same testosterone driven deprived males may instead pursue their dream to compensate their losing prowess either in the athletic and conjugal fields.
An interesting discussion took place in the running group recently - Lifeless Footwear!
One party was vehemently arguing that his success in his field of indulgence was not primarily due to his outstanding academic achievements but rather his aesthetically pleasing personality, charming demeanor and his utmost care that he takes on his physical appearance. With his alluring and assertive manner of handling situations, he, in his lifetime had superseded many other more qualified individuals with much more impressive CV.
The other party reiterated that even though he looked impressive and would fit the bill of every mother's prospective son in law and every CEO's manager to do his dirty job, they are some things that looks do not decide. This party, being the pacifist and leaving to-the-fate kind of fellow, stressed that some things are determined by unspecified unexplainable forces. No matter how qualified one he is, certain things are beyond control. He attributed his success in life to karma, guidance from people around him, good progressive friends and lots of hard work, the only thing he knows. The divine forces paved his way to good fortune by clearing obstacles along the way, like not getting chicken pox during an important examination. But then, a dynamic and assertive person could even fight fate.....