Templates of the mind

Inconsequential conversations... just recalling table talk. Fragmented impressions of a dissolute Friday afternoon.


Conversation over lunch today unearthed more than just trite discussions about the Nan Chiau principal who stepped down last week after whacking a well-deserving teenage girl on the head. We paid lip service to the whole notion of teachers losing their dignity at work today, because we knew that deep down inside real teachers fight on and end up shaping the minds and lives of their charges.

Along with the things they watch on TV, of course.

While munching on chicken wing, battered and deep-fried (diet starts tomorrow), I shared about how shocked and disgusted my students were when - in the guise of impressing upon them the influence Greek myths and tragedies have had on western philosophies - I told them about the story of Oedipus and how in the early 20th century a man named Freud came up with a theory on the Oedipus Complex.

"Oedipus was the son of the King of Thebes, Lalus. When he was born, soothsayers warned Lalus that Oedipus would grow up to kill him, so Lalus exiled the infant, who was saved and was raised as the prince of a neighbouring kingdom. The prophecy came to pass later when as a young man, Oedipus journeyed into his kingdom of birth, met his father, mistook him for a villain and slew him, found his own mother bewitchingly beautiful and married her to claim the throne of Thebes. Eventually when the true nature of their relationship was unearthed that the mother hung herself, and Oedipus promptly dug his own eyes out.... a scene that Gloucestor famously re-enacted in Shakespeare's King Lear.

Freud later took on this tragedy to explain that the child boy's hostility towards his own father was a result of seeing him as a rival for his own mother's sexual affection. He called it 'the Oedipus Complex'."

... towards the end of the second chicken wing Karen sat down to join us, which was when we turned the conversation to what it was like teaching in neighbourhood schools when we did our practicum during our trainee months at NIE. It seems that many many students in Singapore are depressed. We talked about the case last year in TCHS which was hushed up and never brought to the press. Some of the dead boy's classmates were in my class, and had confided that they were talked to by one Chemistry teacher who said Suicide was the act of ultimate selfishness....

How inconsiderate for him to kill himself! Some say. The neighbours harboured deep rancour against the young, pre-maturely ended life and wondered how inconsiderate some people could be, choosing to jump, out of all the flats in the vicinity, from theirs , and create the gruesome mess.(so suay! must go buy 4D tomorrow to get some good luck back)

How selfish! thought his parents, shell-shocked at how they just didn't see it coming. He appeared every bit as well-adjusted and normal as any other 16 year-old teenage boy. Why didn't he say something? Was it a conscious and deliberate decision to bring us grief? Why didn't we notice that something was wrong in his mind?

What inspires someone to go against the very deepest grain of his instinct for self-preservation to terminate his own life? Can it be a rational decision, ever? Does being mired in mental depression and irrationality suffice to overcome all such instincts, as he stood there on the brink, looking around him?


The noise of the morning traffic could be heard nearby. He could almost make out in his inward ears the chatter of the secondary school students as they stood in tuna formation in TransitLink buses in their clean, neatly pressed uniforms. He looked at his own... so white. So uncreased. so regimented, these flappy pockets. And the beige shorts that brought giggles from the young Nanyang Girls just across the road.

The moment had to come. He looked down at the trees that dotted the fringe of the carpark. They looked small, like the ones you saw made of moss encased in glass at showflats alongside the miniature buildings. The sounds of from the busy road faded off now. All he could hear was a vague high-pitched ring in the ear and the thump-thump of his own heart.

He had to take the step. He took it.

How deliberate was the decision? Was his face a mess of tears? How rational was the act?