Dichotomy of Living in a Surreal Well.

I am all mixed up. In fact, I am a very confused person. You can't blame me for that, can you? After all these years of reading the comedies, fantasies and make-beliefs in our outstanding first world local medias, I have become really mixed up. On top of that, I am getting old and, therefore, can also be partially senile. Some people used to say that when a person gets old, he tends to behave like a kid. I think that is quite true in my case, for most of the time I have been telling myself that I am still very young. Young at heart and thoughts. Therefore, I tend to behave like a carefree and irresponsible kid at times, especially so when I try to make sense of high sounding speeches and grandiose promises and schemes expounded by powerful people whose ABC (attitude, behavior and character) would cast unerasable images into the minds of our young and innocent, our naive and gullible, our impressionable and eager-to-please. So, as Molly Meek says, and I fully agree with her, sometimes it is better to be irresponsible in order to be responsible. Don't you agree also?

Yes, I really wish I am now a young teenager with the idealism and the dream of a world where the sky is not the limit. Like that, I can simply fantasize in my own surreal world. Like a frog living in a well. However, I can't. I really can't. Because after years of flying high and low in the sky, I know there is a limit. Even the sky also has a limit. Everything in this world has a limit. Even our tiny Red Dot is bounded by international waters. No matter how excellent and extraordinary we are, we just can't hope to encroach or intrude into our neighboring countries' territories and their national interests and expand our own highly ambitious dreams, to grow the economic pie by taking over control of their sensitive national assets, or to discard our unwanted old folks into their vast but still precious land. That is how my mixed-up brain is thinking now. Am I a mixed-up kid?

There is a limit to growth and expansion. Even an uncontrollable cancerous growth will have to come to an end some day. We can't keep growing the cake, yet want to keep it and eat it. One day, the cake will either be rotten or insufficient for everyone. Especially so when our highly talented people become even more talented in increasing their own salaries. With another two million foreigners coming in to devour the cake, the local natives would be left with only the flagrance to smell. It smells better if you are a distance away from the cake. But if your nose is too close to the cake, the smell is likely to be too pungent for you. Most people may not be able to take it. While our extraordinary talents are getting more talented, plus more and more outside highly talented talents and cleverly disguised talents are joining the free-fall of a windfall, how are we going to cope with the ever-increasing competition and ever-increasing cost of living? I am getting more mixed-up and confused now. What can we do? What are we going to do? I must find out a solution for myself. I will think about it and write it out in my next post.

The Garuda - 20 Aug 2007