August 31, 2011

Taking home these

- Ethics is not judged by consequences to the society; it is evaluated by the amount of happiness you get.
- The desire to be 'good' and to be 'happy' is planted in all of us, in our design. Such is God's will for us.
- Happiness is about self-fulfilment. We can create the direction to achieve self-fulfilment because unlike animals, we have the capacity of mind and will.
- We often believe that happiness comes from increased freedom; and freedom is about having many choices. It is not; happiness comes from what you make out of the choice you made, even if you only had very limited choices.
- It is not about the number of choices you have; it is about how you accept or feel about the choice you make
- Good choices are made based on reliable knowledge and consent.
- A good pianist can make good music with a bad piano; a bad pianist makes only noise even if with the best piano.

Today's RCIA session was probably one of the most engaging ever, in the past 7 months. It was on the topic of ethics and morality, and will span a total of 4 sessions.

Some of the ideas that Father Garcia shared are not foreign to me. In the course of my university days, my course has alluded to some of them. After all, I was in the course of de-constructing society, culture and everyday lives in order to scavenge for deeper meanings and motives. Hmm, nope. It certainly did not sound that 'deep' when I was still an undergraduate. Retrospectives are always more illuminating.

However, the question remains unanswered if you do not have any idea what makes self-fulfilment, and thereby happiness, in your life. For now, I don't exactly know in mine. I guess, I can say I have a hazy idea. But, a hazy idea is not exactly a good idea. So, I'm just letting it come... and trusting that it would... in good time to come... and hopefully, not too late.

Posted by 杏 cy （Jancy） at 23:23

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August 26, 2011

Breaking of words

Facebook is good. It's entertaining, it's informative (though sometimes I get info diarrhoea from it), packed with both exciting and dull updates of my 136 friends (I screen who gets access to my fb) and it lets me show off some of my photos from time to time (I'm under the illusion that my 136 friends care to view them).

Facebook is of absolute no value when it comes to making a connection with what is lying inside oneself. This is when books come in. I mean, real books. Like, you know, the kind printed on yellowish paper, with gluey binding and a front and back cover. The kind you can spend hours in bookstores to browse, leafing page-by-page, and not the kind you get from some IT gadget store or some convenient quick apps downloaded on a gadget.

I am reading Great House, by Nicole Krauss now. Her previous works have more than converted me to be her fan, particularly The History of Love (which I must haunt Eugene to return me).

It continues to amaze me that simple words, when crafted well into sentences and assembled well into paragraphs, can totally absorb my consciousness, bring it into another surreal realm where I feel acknowledged and understood, then land me softly back into my physical setting, feeling purged and relieved of the emotional confusion I had just before reading.

It's happened before, in one of my lowest points in life. That time, I read the most number of books ever in a period of a year. All good books. All took my mind away from the pain, confusion and void that surrounded me then, and returned it to a state of clarity and relief (even if it was temporary). It was more than what anyone could have done for me, and definitely more purgative than any self-help book. That was also the time I decided that good fiction has a much stronger curative power than bestselling self-help books.

Just the comfort of knowing that I have a copy of a few of those books is assuring. It's like having best friends on the shelf, quietly and patiently waiting to comfort you because they know they can. That, Facebook can hardly come close.

Quiet moments, me and my book. The mental getaway.

If you are nodding in agreement with what you have been reading, I hope you are reading a good book now. MPH warehouse sales this weekend at Expo. Go stash some.

Posted by 杏 cy （Jancy） at 11:24

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