Quote
‘If you really love someone,’ Claudia continued, ‘you have to be prepared to accept them as they are. Maybe you hope that one day they get a wake-up call and make the changes for their own reasons.’ – Graeme Simsion in The Rosie Project
Year: 2014
Alienation in the 21st Century
Currently, I am two thirds of the way through, reading American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis on my Amazon Paperwhite Kindle. Admittedly, I cannot read the book for too long at a sitting, because it is as satire as it is graphic as it is…somewhat extremely relatable. Hence, after each scene or two where there has been yet another murder, I have to take a break just to take everything in. Yet it is so engaging because even though no one in the book understands Patrick Bateman, listens to Patrick Bateman, I feel like I can sympathize and say, “Hey, it’s okay to not feel okay”. If only it were that simple, eh? I say that because I feel that in the real world, no one really comforts you and say those words or similar, therefore there is somehow a Patrick Bateman in all of us. It is very much like a defense mechanism that people automatically guard themselves in the city and do not offer the type of emotional help that some of us …
The future of relationships
I was going to name this post “things I don’t really understand”, but there’s just TOO many things that I don’t understand. I have only begun thinking about this recently. It may or may not appeal to where you are right now, but hear me out for a moment. Because I feel that in this generation that we’re living in, a sense of family and companionship is being lost. So it becomes quite worrying actually, how the next generation will pan out. In particular, I want to talk about the use of the term “partner” that is increasingly being used. Honestly, I dislike the term – the meaning is lacking and quite unromantic to me. It’s crazy even for me to describe it that way since my close friends know that I loathe public affection, because I grant the excess as, well, too much to handle in public really. I cringe at the sight of it…but that’s just me. I asked two of my close friends what partner really means, and its distinction from wife …
We are all completely in denial
Aside from the fact that we don’t feel good in our skin at times, we rather like to knock it into our brains an excuse to risk exposing us from the truth. Recently, I finished reading a book on my kindle, The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion. The main protagonist, Don Tilman suffers from Aspergers Syndrome and as a result, lives life through schedules, lists and rules which appears to limit any freedom. However, how can there be any fun, any risk if we do not break these rules? If anything, Don Tilman is the very definition of anti-hero. There is indeed a particular passage in the book that is so bittersweet, heartbreaking and lovely all at the same time, and one that doesn’t just summarize the book brilliantly, but is true to every one of our insecurities: ” And it dawned on me that I had not designed the questionnaire to find a woman I could accept, but to find someone who might accept me”. (page 246) Deep huh? My heart sank a bit …
Change is the way I feel good
A lot can happen in a year even though it seems that each year that goes past as we get older, goes quicker like sand that seeps through our fingers. In the past 12 months or so, I could not tell you enough of the changes that I have been feeling mentally and emotionally. That is not to say changes can’t be physical either but really, I am so positive that all of you have woken up in a different light many times in your life (if you have not, you are either lying or about to experience it soon enough smiley face). I could also not tell you enough that I have had the most riveting, and emotionally challenging year that was full of the tears, the laughters, that feeling of heart-in-stomach as well as distress. How often does it happen that in the end there might have actually been nothing to worry about in the first place? Yep, happens all the time but we humans, just have to deal with our emotions being …
Hoi Yin Li 