(no subject)
Click to viewTake my love, take my land,
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free,
You can't take the sky from me.
Take me out to the black,
Tell them I ain't coming back.
Burn the land and boil the sea,
You can't take the sky from me.
There's no place I can be
Since I found Serenity.
You can't take the sky from me.
I have a lot of shows I watch and love with Great Devotion, and Firefly is one of them. Lasting a too-short one season when obviously there was so much more to be explored, Firefly captured my burning love in just 13 episodes. One of the actors said that Firefly was about 8 people looking into the black of space and seeing different things. While I can (and have) gone on and on about why I love the show so much, I must say the theme song definitely counts as one of them.
I sing it to myself many times - running, cycling, windsurfing, walking with the rain in my face...
Today, I was cycling back from the Chinese sensei and it was cool due to the earlier rain. On the PCN, I didn't have to worry about vehicles, and there were portions that were pretty dark. Pedaling along leisurely, feeling the breeze in my face and the bumps in the road along my arms, I sang the song again. It has been a long time since I did that and it's not because I haven't quite been feeling that, it just.. came into my head.
Since I came back to Singapore, I realize I post less and less. Partly because nothing much happens in my life, and also because I just don't do as much while back here? It's my choice really, I'm happy to stay in one spot the whole day and read (or as recently so happened, watch anime). It's ridiculous because I can't really remember the last time I was content. Actually, yes, I have mentioned it before: the time in ACS before J, when it was just P and D and I. This is different though.
It's like taking a cold shower after a long hard ride, or feeling the adrenalin from having climbed a steep slope. It's drifting in the pool with your eyes shut. It's falling asleep while reading because you woke up early in the morning to bike nearly 80km. It's feeling the wind in your face and not thinking about anything but that. It's knowing that life has been pretty shit at times (okay, quite a lot of the time) and can be and will be, but it's okay. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment (Luke 12:23)
On Saturday, I went to trek Bt Timah with a fellow intern, a lovely sweet young lady. I was pleased to have met her because she expressed an interest in serving society and God, and was a lover of nature. Talk over lunch perturbed greatly then as it revealed the extent to which the Singaporean dream of wealth was entrenched in her mind. She was concerned about TCs, or specifically, how much she would earn at different firms. We're talking here about a difference of less than $2k a month, but a huge difference in quality of training and workload. By the time she mentioned $15k/month at a big firm after 6 years of working there, I was so utterly perplexed that I could not speak for a while. Isn't $4k+ a month enough, I wanted to ask. Why is a BTO not a suitable home? Surely if your future husband is a doctor, I would worry more about whether the two of you would have time for each other as opposed to the total amount of income you both earn, I mentioned.
Comfort levels, she replied. BTOs are just investments, you are guaranteed a profit after 10 years, which is why so many people want them. Our combined income levels will probably exceed the income cap when we decide to get married.
On Sunday, I mentioned it to a church friend, being slightly upset still. She laughed and said after working for over 20 years, she still hasn't hit the $8k mark, and she's living comfortably. It's all subjective, she continued, it depends on how you want to live life.
Indeed, I suppose what made me disappointed was the fact that she was a Christian. In the Tab, Pastor Masters preaches constantly about self-denial, about Christian contentment, warning against materialism and consumerism. To most of the unbelieving world, that would seem to be overly conservative and (dare I say) puritan. It's a message not heard much in Singapore because it goes against everything Singapore strives for - to improve, to 'upgrade', to better oneself. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with striving, but I think there's something very wrong in a society where there's an insatiable pursuit for more in terms of material wealth. Happiness, prosperity, and progress - the three are elided, but oh so very different concepts. I postulated that this is the reason why mega churches and the prosperity gospel is doing so well in Singapore: because it feeds into the desires of people. It's not about self-denial and being God-Centered and storing your riches up in heaven, it's about being blessed by God on this earth and living in the comfort and wealth of that blessing.
Happiness is narrowly defined and while I wish I could say that many people are trying to define their own happiness, I think many still subscribe to the norm/system. Too many. A system needs people to run, and so long as you have sufficient numbers, the system goes on.
That's how I came to believe that the individual matters. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step; an avalanche can start with just the drop of a pebble; a forest fire can be ignited by a few burning embers. Every. Single. Person. Matters.
Haha, it's really odd, because while I have this civic duty switch and a burning desire to Do something, I would genuinely be happy with a cabin by the woods, near a river, with a couple of dogs, and half hour drive from anything. I still want that very much, but I've come to suspect that part of me doesn't want to get what I want precisely because I want it. If that sentence sounds complicated, I suppose it reflects the somewhat twisted logic of it in my head.
On more mundane real life things: I love cycling. Once, I was chasing the pack that peeled off, really pumping hard at about 33kmh. My lungs were burning, my legs were screaming, and I laughed. There was a smile on my face, and I laughed. It's probably the adrenalin rush, but it was wild and glorious.
Also, SNK has consumed my life. I blame tumblr (as I do many things) and D.
Well, that was odd.
You can't take the sky from me.