in good hands
[for Ben and Mels, with apologies for the very purple prose]Watching a spate of close friends' weddings take place, one after another, and anticipating The Next Big One (a beach party, complete with SPG outfits - the horror! - and seaside salsa), it's almost inevitable that my thoughts should turn to luurrve sweet luurrve, and marriage, and other generally soppy yet life-changingly momentous things that are not really soppy at all once you
really start thinking about them.
(How i love the way talking about the things that matter is always so difficult, and sometimes just so darned...
embarrassing. i love the way we hem and haw, stumble over our words, gird our feelings in layers of see-through irony, politely avert our eyes and collectively pretend that the irony is doing its job of concealing how much we really care.)
When Ben and Mels got married, something changed for me, quietly, almost imperceptibly. Even now, i still don't know exactly how it happened, and can only guess at why it happened, but the world suddenly took on a different tone. A warmer, brighter, happier tone. If life could be seen in colours, i would call it a bright, creamy, sunshiny yellow, shot through with shades of terracotta and burnt sienna.
Part of this, no doubt, was simply because it was the most enjoyable wedding i've ever attended. A peacefully busy morning spent with old friends at the bride's place, a beautifully simple church ceremony in the afternoon, and a smashingly fun dinner to top it all off. Great food, great company, great music (the food arriving accompanied by the strains of the 'Star Wars' theme, the couple walking into the ballroom, first to Bach's 'Air On A G-String', then to 'Yellow' by Brit band Coldplay; the friends-of-the-bride with our almost-too-sweet choral rendition of 'We've Only Just Begun'; MW hamming it up onstage with his deep-sexy-baritoned version of 'I've Got A Crush On You' accompanied by Dom-the-Human-Trumpet). And the after-dinner round-the-piano vocal-jamming session: Grace improvising, Brando doing his trademark Kermit, John showing off, the rest of us laughing and singing and fooling around and acting like we didn't have the sense we were born with. For just that one evening, we were high on life, drunk on youth, absolutely, utterly
in the moment - happy, like a profusion of fresh spring flowers suddenly bursting brilliantly, unashamedly into bloom.
But that's not even half the story. After all, a wedding is just that - a wedding. White lace and promises, and a lifetime ahead in which to keep them. The first in a whole series of projects both big and small that the couple will have to undertake together, till death do them part. A fait accompli that marks the official institution of the world that the couple will have to build together, minute by minute, word by word, deed by deed. The burden of hope can seem almost too heavy to bear.
Yet, watching the newly-weds go about their tasks as host and hostess of the biggest party of their lives, i could not help but feel that this burden was something they would not only be able to shoulder, but that in their hands it would no longer be a burden, that it would become something strong, lasting, and beautiful. Ultimately inexplicable, this quiet confidence - in our fallen world, can adherence to any kind of hope be anything but inexplicable, be called anything but faith? So i will call it faith - this belief that they will succeed where the alchemists of old failed, that they will take the dross of everyday life, with all its litany of joys and frustrations, laughter and tears, and turn it into the gold of a lifetime lived together in a deep and growing love.
i am not one who is given to easy optimism. Over the years i have become perhaps a little too conscious of humankind's prodigious creativity when it comes to making a mess of things. Consider the amount of damage just one person can inflict on the world around him. Then take that and multiply it by two, and what you have is just a fraction of the total damage two people can do collectively, to each other and to the world at large. You can prove this mathematically. It's exponential. So it was with a sense of glad surprise that i found myself believing, wholeheartedly, uncynically, that this was one thing that would not become The Next Big Screw-Up. Nay, i don't just believe it, i
know it. i know it in the same way that i knew Ben and Mels were going to get married, even when they first started dating, all those years ago. And this knowledge is all the more precious because it's given me the faith that with God's help, there are things that transcend even our human propensity towards error and entropy.
It is a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere, to know that the people you most care about are happy and well. i'd like to say for the record, with total, unironic sincerity, that i am thankful that one of my closest friends is in the good hands of a good man, and that he in turn is in the good hands of a good woman. And that the years they have together ahead of them are safely in good hands too.
in praise of men
This is an experiment. Comments and brutal honesty welcome.
i like men. Let me say that a little louder. I LIKE MEN. In fact, truth is, i usually like them better than women. There. Now send in the Feminazis. Assemble the firing squad. But before i take my last breath, at least hear me out. i have my reasons. And though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
Men are fun to be with. They laugh out loud (sans shrill screeching), act silly, joke about being fat. Celebrate their beer bellies. Make crude jokes. They know the fine art of Letting Things Slide, of not taking life too seriously, and of not allowing life to take them too seriously. The best men carry with them an air of confident good humour that can see them through almost any situation. And that confidence makes the people around them feel good as well. It's a mojo kinda thing.
Men don't talk about spa treatments. As far as i'm concerned, spa treatments are the single most deadly conversation killers ever dreamt up by the human race, followed by manicures and diets. "You know i tried out the seaweed with milk honey and yoghurt package yesterday... it was so good, you must try it too. Only $135 after discount! And the best thing is that it comes with a manicure voucher - 20% off your next manicure with them. i felt so good after that i treated myself to an ice-cream... i was like, that's 200 calories that i'll have to work off at the gym..." You get the idea.
Men know better than to take things too personally. They take criticism cheerfully and will still be your friend even if you tell them that their singing really, really sucks. i like working with men because they are task-oriented and direct. If they want you to get something done by 5am tomorrow dammit, they will tell you so, in no uncertain terms. None of that circuitous emotional kid-gloving for them. You always know exactly what's what when you're working with men, and there is little need to second-guess them because, hey, they're simple, uncomplicated people.
Having good male friends is one of the greatest blessings a woman can have. It helps balance out the baleful effects of estrogen overload, and contributes a healthy sense of perspective and objectivity to her life. And that, when seen in contrast to the emotionally-charged, purple-hazy, narrow-horizoned perspective so typical of the fairer sex, can be as refreshing as an ice-cold beer on a hot windless afternoon.
Alright. You can bring on the firing squad now. The first female anti-feminist, dying for her cause. Roll over, Joan of Arc. The gender war is where it's all at now.
counting the cost
Economics, a colleague told me once, is the science of life. It is the study of how people make their decisions, of why they choose one road over another. This was a radically different take on the subject from the one i'd been accustomed to at school - a veritable paradigm shift, in fact, and one that changed, in however small a way, the manner in which i think about life. What used to be a rather impersonal, if vaguely fascinating, academic discipline suddenly became an all-encompassing theoretical framework for understanding human motivations and actions. The idea that
everything carries an opportunity cost, and that all our choices are the result of the weighing and balancing of costs and benefits, was something that i had never quite appreciated before. Now, though, it appealed to me at a deeply personal level, made possible no doubt by my new-found awareness that everything we do in life, we do as a result of a choice, whether conscious or not.
Contrary to popular belief, the best things in life are
not free. Even our most cherished values and beliefs come with price-tags attached. And if deciding in favour of some of these 'best things' seems, at first, not to make 'economic' sense, it is only because we are so accustomed to equating economics with money and finance, when in fact that isn't what economics is about at all.
Imagine, for instance, that you are an amateur artist who has given up a stable career as an architect in order to devote your time and energy to art. The cost of your decision? Partly monetary, of course - an artist-friend once confessed that Singaporean artists are constantly bitching about money (or the lack thereof), and the sacrifice seems all the greater in the light of the relatively attractive income guaranteed by a career in architecture. But there are other costs as well - the loss of prestige and social standing, the giving up of a high-flying yuppie lifestyle, and most frightening of all, the very real possibility of failure and subsequent disillusionment. Set against all this, the benefits may seem relatively meagre to some: the chance to do something you are passionate about, the possibility (as yet unfulfilled) of success and personal fulfilment. But there is also the cost of not pursuing a dream: frustration, boredom, wasted talent, the nagging 'what-ifs' that assail you as you lie awake in bed at night. The thought of which may, or may not, be enough to tip the balance in favour of the road less travelled.
At some point last year, i started making conscious, metacognitive choices for the first time in my life. i chose, for example, to buy peace-of-mind and clarity-of-conscience at the price of exclusion-from-the-in-crowd at work, because i realised that all the in-crowd seemed interested in doing was bitching viciously about people they felt did not match up to their high standards of competence and excellence. i realised, too, the price of that particular decision may actually have been higher than i could positively ascertain, for the simple reason that exclusion-from-the-in-crowd also rendered me vulnerable to being a victim of their gossip-mongering. More recently, i have purchased the-right-to-pursue-what-really-matters-to-me, at the cost of possible-deadlock-on-the-career-ladder, failure-to-fulfil-society's-expectations-of-me-as-an-ex-scholar, and probable-future-inability-to-match-my-friends'-lifestyles-and-income-levels. And at this very moment, i'm buying the-sense-of-achievement-that-comes-with-writing-something-vaguely-decent, with a-few-hours-of-lost-sleep.
Perhaps one day some motivational self-help guru (from America, of course) will write an allegorical fable featuring a Great Supermarket of Life where all the possible choices in a given individual's lifetime are lined up on rows upon rows of shelves, grouped according to some strange yet ultimately rational system (Career, Country-of-Residence, Life-Partner, Colour-of-Underwear...), all with price tags and electronic barcodes neatly attached.
So, how much
is that doggy in the window?
