Low Hanging Fruit

 

The last time I had such a rough time in my life was at the beginning of my adolescence. And it was bad. It cast such a big shadow over the rest of my life. For the previous few years, I had done well. I was finally in an environment where I was well adapted, I had friends, I was doing well in school. And then it inexplicably fell apart. There were a few things... first, my grades slipped. And when I say slipped, I don't mean I was in a lousy school, I don't mean I was in danger of failing my exams. I mean that I was making that unhappy transition from being an A student at a top school to being a B student at a top school. And of course my tiger parents treated it like it was the end of the world.

Which was the second thing. My tiger parents were treating it like the end of the world and making things miserable for me. And when that happens, you just don't have pillars of emotional support at the very time when you are trying to figure out what life is like emotionally. It just felt like life was very grey all the time. All the people I was ahead of just raced ahead of me and I never got back to where I used to be.

I got over it, eventually. After I graduated from secondary school, it felt very good. But did I really get over it? What happened was that I went out and I found a few more niches. I was in an environment where if you displayed talent in anything, you would be richly rewarded. They'd help you along the way. It suddenly seemed easy. But maybe it was the wrong impression.

IF you were good at mathematics in school, then it would be easy. But was it easy? You'd go into the university, do more mathematics, and finally get to a certain level where you were struggling, just like all those classmates you were sniggering at.

If you had talent for writing, you could write a school play. And a production would come up just like that. But in the real world, you would have to handle all the politics that came up.

If you were a teenager, being a fan of rock music would be the closest thing to heaven there was. I thought that love would last forever, but apparently it doesn't. It just feels watered down now, like it was something comforting, like the company of a good friend. I would say that my life was saved by music, you have to ask, why music? I guess that was the best way out of my depression.

I looked at a lot of the things that I had grown to be proud of over these years. Rock and roll. A faculty with mathematics. A faculty with music. Running a marathon.

That's really disturbing, because it tells me that the last time I pulled myself out of a hole, it was by excelling in things that young men typically excel in. That's not good. How am I going to grow old?

I earned a piece of mind in 2006, and so far that hasn't deserted me. My life between 2006 and 2018 has been pretty good. I can't complain. I can only wish that I used this time more productively, to earn a little bit more financial security for the future.

I think about how movies and music were a temporary distraction. And in some way, they were even more than that. I actually thought that they were some kind of higher plane of existence, that they would be a celebration of life. I saw myself as having a creative career. And in many ways, that would not be meaningless.

Was it too easy for me the last time around? Did I just do all the easy stuff? I guess I took the easy way out. Go to a good school, and then after that things will be easy for you for a few years. And then after that, what happens?

There were other times I dug myself out of a hole. That happened in 2006, and I did it by finding out how people at my office worked. By finding out what ticked people off. That was a way of getting yourself out in a positive way. Then there was this time when I needed to find a job and I ended up doing just that. Maybe that was positive, but I really didn't enjoy doing that, being responsible, having to make deadlines, having to be polite. And maybe that's why I bounced back, and shirked against more of the same.

When I was in secondary school, there was always this thing called “the mould”. It was a place that did try to make a man out of you, and at the same time, they tried to cast you into this character, where you'd be an efficient and impatient leader. A type A personality who would just do everything quickly and efficiently, and not think too hard about all the finer nuances. I didn't live up to that, and now that I think about it, maybe they were doing me a favour, and trying to beef me up or life in Singapore.

What happened instead was that I tried to be some kind of talented artist instead. And that was a left turn that suited me more, and yet at the same time, it could be debilitating and took me far away from adjusting more to the Singapore system.

In a way, Singapore is suited to be a 21^st century city, social media ready. But at the same time, it's not really that great. There is so much emphasis on putting everything on warp speed. There's so much competition. It's an emotionally blank place, and yet everything is on warp speed. There's so much stuff everywhere, and yet you might end up hating it. You're just rushed all the time. It's more more more. And you could be headed in the wrong direction, you might be headed for a terrible crash, and nobody really cares.

I have to strike this balance now, between being the comfortable existence of being laid back and artistic, and at the same time, moving fast enough to keep ahead. I've run out of low hanging fruit. I've run out of easy ways to have makeovers. I need to start making sacrifices, need to learn to do the hard things now.

Groundhog Day in Mexico

I'm still thinking about those days when I was about to go to Mexico. How did I get from there to where I am today?

Deep down inside, I didn't really like what was going on in my entire adult life. OK, that sounds a little harsh, but I saw it as one endless series of distractions.

On the eve of my departure to “Mexico”, I still saw the future as something to look forward to, and in retrospect, this is because it's different from the present. I was still in the frame of mind where I saw change as a form of progress. And in a way it was, because it paved the way to life in a new country, and a new job, learning new skills.

But if you were to ask me if I was truly happy during the time that I lived in “Mexico”, I have to say, not really. Towards the end, I was holding on. I was grabbing on to this narrative that my move to Mexico represented progress. In a way, it was, and on another level, a more profound level, I had real doubts about whether I liked this “progress”.

There was a neighbourhood in “Mexico” that was called “Pilgrim Square”. There was a bus terminal there, and I crossed that place very often. I didn't go to the actual Pilgrim Square, but I do remember the times that I was there. I was there with my sister when I was planning a bus trip to a famous tower. And for some reason, we met a guy who was obviously on drugs, being very friendly and saying hi. I was there the day after I went back to Singapore, and I thought to myself that the spiritual birthplace of Mexico was Pilgrim Town. And there were a few Mexican restaurants and bars, and some of them had mariachis. And later on it did occur to me that it was the tourist trap of the town, why would I love it? It's not the heartland.

Then that was where I brought a friend who came to visit. I also brought my cousin there. Most of the time they visited the place and then decided not to go back again. Well, why would you tour a place more than once anyway? It was a nice tourist destination, it was a nice place for people to walk around, nicely decorated. But it was a tourist destination, and not really something for a real home.

Same for my degree at University of Mexico. There were a group of people who hung out for activities, and gradually I drifted away from them. I don't really know if I enjoyed the experience of being Asian American.

I remember that the first few years in “Mexico” were a little frantic. They were exciting. They were the first few years that I had on my own, where I was truly free. I always thought that I would be in a place that was intellectual, that the intellectualism would excite me. In a way that was true. I had been swimming around like a goldfish in a bowl for years. To quote a Pink Floyd lyric. The novelty was thrilling. Not having to work in a job where I worked for 9 straight years was pretty fly.

Then later on, it dawned on my gradually that I had given up a great part of my happiness.

First, I had a community of people with whom I considered my friends. I had to cut my ties with them.

Second, it's embarrassing to be living at home with your parents, but at least I was still taken care of. And it wasn't much of a hardship at first to keep it going. But I'm not a cook and if I didn't eat out, I wouldn't be able to fix myself a wonderful meal.

Third, it was exciting to be in the southern US. But it wasn't home. You didn't have Singapore food. There was new and funky stuff to try out at first, but after a while the thrill died out.

Fourth, there was quite a bit of a homeless population in the United States. At first, they were a novelty, and it was amusing to watch their antics. But I insisted on taking public transport rather than drive the car. My parents are not that eco conscious, they can drive anywhere they want. I took the public bus. And in many ways the public bus system was well run. But there were a lot of services that came only every half an hour. There was a lot of waiting out in the streets, and in the US, you don't really want to be in a public place. There were druggies everywhere. I never converted to taking the car every day, but I think every time I took public transport, which was basically every day that I stepped out of my house, and I saw all the homeless people, it just took something out of me.

Fifth, paradoxically, my last few years in Singapore gave me something to look forward to. I told myself, you could imagine yourself going places. There was this anticipation of some change in the offing. Something new to look forward to. But the problem is, what happens after you get that something new?

Sixth, Trump got elected. It was a national trauma. I think America, post Great Recession, was probably sliding downhill. It was still a great country, it will be a great country for a while yet. But things were sliding. They seemed to be going great. America seemed to be getting more tolerant, more progressive, they seemed to be the leaders of the tech world. This was true. America was travelling on two directions at once, half of it was going forward, and half was moving backwards. The electing a black guy as a president was true, the giving the Oscar to the Koreans was true, the wins for the fights on social justice were true. But the ugly side was also manifesting itself. The reactionary side, the side which saw their lives move backwards, the side which became overworked and underpaid. The fake news believing, conspiracy theory minded, Trumpy side. I saw that hateful side of America – thankfully, not personally, but in the sense of you saw what people were saying online in America, you heard about the shootings, you saw people being rude to each other. Not only were some people being more racist, but also the anti-racist people were less tolerant of what they considered crossing the line.

So “pilgrim square” always represented a “welcome to Mexico” to me. “Mexico” had a lot going for it. Beautiful scenery, mild weather, multicultural community, scientifically progressive. Then why did I fail to settle there?

These things were not so obvious to me at first. But eventually things dawned on me.

First, I had lost the capacity to care for the people around me. I was living out there on my own, and a lot of it was, how do I take care of me. What do I do for me. When I surf the net, I entertain me. When I read a book, I entertain me. When I cook my meals, I do it for me. When I look for a job, I take care of me. I never ever gave anything to the homeless, even when I was making my own money. I always thought of it in terms of, “I'm just a chink to them, not a fully fledged human being”.

Second, my life had lost that forward momentum. I wasn't even sure about what I would look forward to in life.

Third, my head wasn't right. The discipline was beginning to unravel. It was basically like groundhog day towards the end, living the same day over and over again. I felt that my brain was circling the drain.

My attitude towards living in “Mexico” was that it was a holiday. I had always treated it like a holiday. When it was a holiday, things were wonderful, and it was glorious. I didn't have a care in the world. Maybe it should have bothered me that I wasn't really engaged in something deeper and more meaningful. But somehow it didn't. I knew what I wanted to do, I did my job, I kept myself alive, I bought entertainment stuff that I could not buy back in Singapore.

My brain was a bit too much like a lizard brain. It was a flashy brain. It was a flea like brain. It was a brain that could jump 100 times its own size. But I could never get it to keep still, I could never get it to do anything disciplined.

There have been times when I've changed myself for the better. Maybe there were two times in my life when I've gone through a lot of epiphanies and a lot of changes, and they were 7 years apart, so I made it a tradition to look at myself every 7 years. During one metamorphorsis, I was going through a lot of angst as a teenager, and there was one magical year when a lot of things cleared up for me and the way forward became clearer. During the next skin shedding, I was in college, and a lot of the basic facts of life and all the secrets became clear to me. It was a process of pulling my head out of my ass. There was another skin shedding that took place 7 years later, and I would say that was the dividing line between the first few years at work (which was hellish because I didn't adapt) and the next few years (which were nice and comfy).

7 years later, however, I couldn't find any skin shedding. That was the year that I started work in “Mexico”. It was a big year in my life, but in a way, no big change. That should have been an ominous thing. Or actually, it was the end of years of struggle where I tried to leave my first job for greener pastures. And now it is 7 years later, and I have to face another reckoning.

I have to have some clarity about the person that I want to be. I think that 7 years ago, there were some stages that I should have gone through. It still felt like I was moving forward. I was living on my own, I was independent, it should have felt like a victory. I had come a long way from being that guy who was stuck in a dead end job at the factory. But that was the beginning of the rot setting in. That was the preview of my future. That was the beginning of what I thought was my liberation, but it wasn't the beginning of my dreams coming true. It was the beginning of a great stagnation.

Now I have to police my thinking a little bit. I have to exercise a little bit of discipline, a bit of self control.

I could be more interested in people. I could be more compassionate towards people. I could be more enterprising. I could try to avoid getting stuck in doomscrolling. I could try having a less flashy brain. I could be less stuck in a loop. I could try to avoid yearning for the things that I don't want. I could break out of my old patterns of life. I could go beyond doing thing but read books which are of marginal interest to my life. I could try to reach out to people. I could push harder for my projects. I could learn to live the life I live. I could learn to be more organised. I could learn to set myself up for the rest of my life. I could try to live in harmony with the life I'm given.

Everybody's telling you something about how shitty your life is. Be it as it may, you could break out of it.