My Generation

Dear reader,








Musical Monday was a big flop, wasn't it? Well...my inconsistency knows no bounds then. Anyway, speaking of music, I love songs that inspire; songs that provoke thought, that are sources for the imagination. Imagination fountains: those are the only things worth listening to--or watching, or reading, or thinking about, for that matter. Sometimes we get caught up in the world, and we lose ourselves and our purity. Now, I'm not saying that people are all worldly, spiritually-depraved degenerates. I'm merely suggesting that there's a lot of unnecessary hanky-panky and silliness going on in this life, and we'd all be better off if we just stopped ourselves from getting involved in stuff like that. 


Paul describes it better than I can. In 1 Corinthians 6:12 he says: "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything." 


And he says something extremely similar in 1 Corinthians 10:23; "All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify." 

When he says 'profitable', he doesn't only mean profit in terms of money. Something that will develop us, help us grow, something positive. He means, pretty much: everything is permissible, but not everything builds us up. How very true. Sleeping in on weekends, watching a movie when we should be studying, badmouthing someone--even if it's done in total confidence--won't kill us, it's all harmless. We justify our actions by saying they won't do us any harm. We always forget that these actions--more often than not--won't do us any good either. If every single person on this earth made a conscious effort to limit their pursuits to purely positive and edifying ones I wonder what the world would be like. On the other hand, perfection tends to get boring after a while, don't you think, dear reader? I wonder if it's a good thing humans can never be perfect, at least not in this life. It's all about the process, after all, not the end product. Well--while we're mortal--we won't ever reach perfection, but the least we can do is to strive for it.

I came across this quote one day...I forget when and where I got it, or what wild Internet goose chase led me to discover it in the first place. I don't even know if it ties in with my current ramblings--refer above--but I figured I'd just throw it in here for some diversity.

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming. 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

That quote gave me chills. It's a scary thought, don't you think? The thought that 'we are worshipping what we are becoming.'


Anyway. I'm meandering. Very much so. The real reason I'm writing this is to share a song with you, dear reader. The song is called 'Generasiku' and it was sung by OAG, you know, my favourite Malaysian band. It means 'My Generation' in Malay. Oh, this song was on the soundtrack for a Malaysian movie called 'Gol & Gincu' (Goals & Lipstick), which was about a female futsal team, I think. It was an average-type chick flick, nothing spectacular, in my opinion. Anyway, that explains the football elements (or soccer, depending on which side of the Atlantic you hail from) in the music video. So, without further ado...hey, have you ever wondered where the word 'ado' came from? Such a funny little word, isn't it? A-doo. Much ado about nothing. Ah. Doo. If you say it enough times, it starts to sound like a foreign language. Ado. Aaa-do. Ahhh. Dooo. Ado.


Oh, right. The song, Here you go...enjoy!

















'Generasiku'
OAG
Pagi terjaga ku dari mimpi
Terasa hati senang sekali
Pasti dunia ku yang punya di hari ini
Bersama kawan-kawan ku pergi
Ketawa riang senang hati
Indahnya dunia ketika kita muda remaja


[Chorus]
Segalanya dalam genggaman
Walau apa pun tak kan menjadi halangan
Hidup ini sedia menanti
Generasiku bersinar bagai mentari
Oh-oh...


Malam ini bertemu di pesta
Berdebar membalas senyumannya
Manisnya, oh, jatuh cinta kali pertama
Bersama melukiskan impian
Cinta, cita-cita dan harapan
Di usia ini...tiada yang tak mungkin, oh sayang


[Chorus]


Jangan gentar mengejar mimpi
Yakin, berani, percaya diri
Dan mula dengan 'hello'
Oh-oh...


Jangan takut jatuh ke bumi
Bingkas bangun melangkah lagi
Ke depan, lari dan terbang menuju bintang
Hanya kau saja yang bisa menentu
Arah hidupmu yeah...
Oh-oh...


Pagi terjaga ku dari mimpi
Terasa hati senang sekali
Indahnya dunia ketika kita muda remaja


[Chorus] x2
Oh-oh...


Segalanya dalam genggaman (Oh-oh...)
Hidup ini...
Generasiku...

English Translation

'My Generation'

OAG

This morning, I woke from a dream

My heart felt so light

Surely, the world is mine today

With my friends I go

Laughing happily, with a light heart

The world is so wonderful when we're young

[Chorus]

Everything is within our grasp

Nothing can stand in our way

This life is ready and waiting

My generation shines like the sun

Oh-oh...

Tonight, we meet at the festival

My heart beats as I return her smile

It's so sweet, oh, falling in love for the first time

Together we draw out our dreams

Love, ambition and hope

At this age...nothing is impossible, oh [my] love

[Chorus]

Don't be afraid to chase your dream

Confident, brave, believe in yourself

And start with 'hello'

Oh-oh...

Don't be afraid of falling down to earth

Resiliently rise and take another step

Forward, run and fly, heading for the stars
Only you can decide

The direction of your life, yeah...

Oh-oh...

This morning, I woke from a dream

My heart felt so light

The world is so wonderful when we're young

[Chorus] x2

Oh-oh...

Everything is within grasp

(Oh-oh...)

This life...

My generation...

Great song, right? An inspiration fountain if there ever was. The world really is wonderful when you're young. If you try hard enough, you can see the years stretching out in front of you, like a path or a river, and it just goes on and on until it disappears into the horizon. The future is like that horizon in the distance: vague and unknowable at the moment, but you'll get there soon enough.

And on that note, I shall leave you, dear reader. See you round the bend. Til then, I remain...

Yours,

Figgy the Youthful

Overlap

Dear reader,



I love long car rides, don't you? I wonder if this is a result of my family's annual pilgrimage to our longhouse each Christmas. Talk about long car rides. It takes about 15 hours by car, give or take a few hours for pit stops and dilly-dallying. And that's only after they fixed up the roads. We used to have to go by the muddy logging roads, quite an experience. One on occasion, one of my uncles was driving us. He insisted on skidding the car sideways on every time the road sloped downhill, causing me and my three siblings to squeal in delight and mock fright. And before there were even any roads connecting the cities to my longhouse, we had to go by express boat. I remember playing with my siblings while we waited for the express to arrive; hopping around in the black river mud pretending to be mudskippers. I loved it when I would hop a particularly large hop, and the suction from the mud would suck my slippers clean off my feet. Well, in a manner of speaking. There was nothing even remotely clean where the mudskipper game was concerned. If you managed to stay clean after a round of mudskipper, you weren't doing it properly.

I just realized how old I sound. "Why, back in my day..." Or perhaps it's just because Sarawak is actually a very young state. We're only about 47 years old, after all. We're a baby compared to other countries and states in the world. In the 19 years I've been alive, we've gone from express boats, to muddy logging roads, to proper tar and cement roads--albeit with gigantic potholes from logging trucks passing through. Pretty impressive, if you ask me.

Anyway. Back to the topic of long drives. The reason I love car rides is it gives you time to think. To sit down, be quiet, stare off into space, and just think. So I was being driven home one day, by my driving instructor, ironically. In the midst of my sitting and staring and thinking, I happened to look up out the window, and I saw an aeroplane. Or airplane. Whatever. It was flying relatively low, low enough for me to see the details on the underside of it as it passed overhead, but you still had to squint a little to see them clearly. And it got me thinking:

How many people are on that plane?
Are they looking down out of their windows, the same way I was looking up out of mine?
Can they see the car I was riding in, or was it lost in a swarm of other cars, milling about the winding streets like ants in an ant farm?
What were they thinking about as they gazed out of their windows? About the ant-sized people in their ant-sized cars, perhaps?
For every woman on that plane, there is a daughter. A sister. A mother. A wife. A grandmother.
And for every man; a son. A brother. A father. A husband. A grandfather.
For every person; a cousin, an uncle, a lover, a teacher.
Each person; a soul.
A life.
A story to tell.

Then the plane flew over the car, and out of sight.

Honestly. Why is it there are such selfish people in the world? How can someone live their lives in a bubble when every minute of every day, our lives overlap with the lives of the people next to us?

I don't know. This 'lives overlapping' thing seems to be a recurring theme to me. I think about it all the time. It's comforting, I suppose, in a vague way. It means that we're never truly alone in the world. Whatever we've been through, no matter how embarrassing or degrading or seemingly insurmountable it may be, someone else in some other corner of the world has probably gone through far worse at some point in history. The elasticity and endurance of the human spirit, and all that. On the other hand, it's also awesomely humbling. We realize that, in the grand scheme of things, considering the Universe and everything in existence, we're nothing but cosmic ants. Busy, busy, busy living our lives, running here and there, helter-skelter. All the while some higher power--the One who gives and takes away--is watching us, loving us, judging us. Compared to Him, we're nothing but stars in the sky. Grains of sand on the shore. Ashes blowing in the wind.

And...I'm officially out of metaphors.

I should go to bed now, I suppose. I really need to start sleeping like a normal human being again, instead of some nocturnal creature. Til next time, dear reader, I remain...




Yours,


Figgy; Found in Faith, Lost in Thought

Adolescent angst

Dear reader,


I wish I could sing. Or play an instrument. Or something. I don't know. Have you ever felt like you weren't accomplishing anything in your life, dear reader? When I was younger I thought I was going to take the world by storm, become the next Christopher Paolini. Make my mark on the world, a blazing fire of glory and wit. Like some Shakespeare-quoting shooting star. Instead I'm a burnt out little candle. I just feel so old and cynical. Jaded. How is that even possible? I mean, I'm 19 not 91. Why do I feel like such a has-been when I never even was? Ah, maybe that's it. I can sense my time running out, the years slipping past me and I can't do anything to stop it.

I thought only teenagers go through angst over absolutely nothing. Well, I'm technically still an adolescent, right? Adolescence, defined as 'the period between the beginning of puberty to adulthood'. There you go. While we're on the subject of adolescent angst, I hate the way teenagers are portrayed on TV. Not every person between the ages of 13 and 20 are that...stupid. We don't throw random temper tantrums or nearly die when our parents walk with us at the mall. I enjoy shopping with my mother! And I have never, ever shouted that my parents were ruining my life. Stereotypes, bah!

Maybe this sudden depression's got something to do with me not being busy anymore. After two months of frantic activity, to have it suddenly come to an end is...disorientating. One minute you're spinning out of control--cursing the stupid deadline, drinking gallons and gallons of coffee, wondering if this thing will actually kill you, then not minding the thought of being dead because at least then you could get a decent night's sleep--and then the next minute, your life is at a complete standstill. It's like you were in a speeding car which collided head-first with a wall of molasses. Our project is officially over. All we have left is the presentation; the pitch, if you will. We're trying to get people to give us money so we can do another book, but better this time. I guess I need another project, another goal. Another thing to live for and pour little pieces of my soul into.

Anyway. I just watched a slew of YouTube videos today. Where did all these ridiculously self-assured and confident teenagers come from? Prattling away on their webcams and camcorders, sounding so witty and funny and articulate. Was I this nonchalant and cool when I was their age? No. No, definitely not. My feelings, my thoughts, my personality...even now they haven't formed themselves into anything concrete or permanent. I'm convinced of something one day, and then the next day my mom says something that makes me pause and change my mind. Or I suddenly see the flaw in my own argument, so I discard the whole idea as a mistake. I mean, forget about being articulate and expressive, I'm not even sure of what I want to express yet.

So yeah. I'm starting classes again later this March. That's something to get excited about anyway. I can't wait for Drawing and Illustration! It's going to be so awesome. We're probably going to learn about stuff like perspective and anatomy. You know. All that cool artsy stuff.

Oh, wait. Another possible explanation for my depression: I can't connect to the Internet at home. I'm typing up this post in my college library. Yes, I'm at the library even though I have no classes. What, is that just too nerdy of me, dear reader? I love the library. Just sitting in the library makes me feel smarter. More scholarly and knowledgeable. Anyway, my home wireless thingy is shot.  I have no idea what happened to it. I think I'm going through withdrawal symptoms. I'm completely useless at home. Every time I turn my laptop on, all I can do is stare blankly at the screen. I can't even do normal things that don't require Internet access because it just doesn't feel the same. Like when I'm writing or drawing. It just feels wrong, like I'm boxed in. Google is my homepage. No fooling. I like to know that, if I ever get the urge to, I can just pop on over to Google and search my little heart out. Not having Internet access makes me feel handicapped or disadvantaged somehow.

Oh. Abrupt subject change time. You know what would be cool? A drawing of a boy or a girl, whatever; and they're texting someone with headphones on while playing a video game and surfing the net at the same time. I'd call it 'Generation of Electricity'. Well? Whaddya think? Get it? It's a play on words...you know. Generation, generation. Of electri...yeah. It is a bit lame. I have so many ideas for possible drawing projects, but sadly I lack the motivation, discipline and skill to carry them out.

Okay, I guess I'd better go now. Seeing as I've run out of things to say and all. So...bye.



Yours,



Figgy the Angsty and Borderline Depressed Adolescent