Tuesday, July 20, 2004

[transmission start]
 
thoughts: the school of hard knocks, university of life, and other places where you pick up a thing or two....
 
they say (yes, they  as in everyone. the people. everybody and yet no one in particular) that.... well, what is it they say again? everyone seems to assume to know what is going around, when you don't. weird but true.
 
anyway, back to the point - the school of hard knocks (bruises free of charge), the university of life and all those other places outside school where you learn a thing or two...
 
right.... in school they teach you stuff... but not much of it is relevant to life in general. i mean, when on earth are you going to use things like differentiation, integration? unless maybe you're going to do something related to it.... otherwise.... and yet, they can't teach you other things... life skills, that kind of thing. you pick that up in what i'd like to call the school of hard knocks....
 
getting a degree in the school of hard knocks is impossible -  you're always learning new stuff... and like the name suggests, a lot of it can hurt. but that's how we learn i guess. trial and error. we get hurt by some things, we pick ourselves up and move on. Ok fine, it's not as easy as it sounds, but eventually it more or less ends up that way. it's so easy to mope, to get depressed (like i do). but that's not what's supposed to happen. 
  
the university of life is like that too.... it's ongoing... something that just doesn't end (till you're dead or dying at least. ok, bad joke). you pick it up in school, but more out of school. it teaches you those perennial lessons - 1. life is not fair. that's always the first lesson you learn. everything else you pick up the way is probably unique to your own situation. you learn from watching yourself (hey, it is possible ok? i do it all the time), watching others, interacting with others... that kind of thing.  you have know idea how much you can pick up just by watching and listening -  and apparently it's something we could do a lot more of.
 
after every situation that you find yourself in, whether it hurts or not, if you do take the time to sit down and think about it, you'll realise that along the way, there's stuff you've picked up. may not be about the other person, or some skill you learnt, but rather, maybe you've learnt something about yourself. those are sometimes the most valuable lessons -  despite you being you (who else could it be?), and that perhaps no one probably knows you better than yourself, there's still stuff about yourself that you don't know. you discover things about yourself that either you never knew existed, or that they just were there but never noticed. that's why like in a few posts ago, i mentioned i like to ask people 'when you look in the mirror, what do you see?' and when they ask you to tell them what you see in them, sometimes it's surprising.
 
life is all about self-discovery. for some part of it anyway. for the rest it's more or less how to live, how to deal - with things and people, and that well, everything isn't what it seems.
 
so... to round off... like i said Jiahui, thanks.  thank you for teaching me - about everything, and about myself. you may not know why i'm saying this now or that it doesn't make any sense, because you feel like you didn't really do anything, but when you think about it, you don't really have to actively do anything to teach someone. like i said, watch and listen, and the amount of things you can pick up after thinking about them is pretty amazing. maybe one day i'll tell you why and how.... but not yet.... (there. now we're even. you said the last time that you're post t-retreat post was 'dedicated 50% to me or something. now i've returned the favour. hahahahahahahahaha)
 
till next time...
 
[transmission end]
  
 

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chr1s0ng put the word on the street at 8:34 AM
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