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?

Mourn.

The students pointed me to the common thread that ran through the 5 ancient civilisations: fear of death and the afterlife.

In ancient Egypt, pharaohs made monuments of their own deaths in the shape of the pyramids, in the hope that they will attain immortality in the afterlife. Today, the pyramids appear immortal, enduring some 2800 years later.

Carthage, in the face of impending doom brought on by the advancing Romans, erected temples to pray to Baal and sacrificed their own children to the gods.

The ancient Greek civilisation, for all its academic and intellectual foment - these folks INVENTED the words "eclecticism", "platonic ideals", "equestrian" and "democracy" for crying out loud - had to construct their lives around Greek gods and goddesses who took on human capriciousness and emotions, to explain away the senselessness of how lives begin and how they end.

Even the Roman conqueror, Alexander the Great called himself the incarnation of Hercules, the Roman demigod, in his own bid to acquire some sense of divinity for posterity's sake.

The Chinese buried their maids, servants and wives with them in the hope that such luxuries should not be denied after death and that they would not be lonely.

Today, I read about one man's grief and the loss of one life... a woman he did not even really know. And I am completely and utterly undone. I grief with him. I mourn.

3000 years of human history in 2 days and there is some sense that we unite in the act of mourning over our complete and utter helplessness over life and death. But the consolation the Christian takes comfort in, is that while the single human life looks pathetically insignificant against the immense expanse of the stars in the sky and the planets above us, God knows and cares for each life. Each and everyone of us can take comfort in knowing that although we cannot triumph over death by our own strength, Jesus has.


"When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings [3]
and crowned him with glory and honor." - Psalm 8:3 - 5


O death, where is thy sting?

Historical irrelevance?

Teacher: You have just spent 40 minutes presenting on Egyptian civilisation and the Carthaginian Empire and you have no idea why it's relevant to us today???

Student: Er... yeah.

Teacher: So why do we need to know all this? So much detail about the Punic Wars, Carthage, the pyramids and the mummy thingamajigs? What on earth have we been stupidly copying notes down for?

Student: Because.... mummification is interesting?

(stifled laughs from across the classroom)

Teacher: (raises eyebrows quizzically at class, deliberate pause left for the stupidity of that statement to sink in)

Student (excitedly): Oh! Oh! ... and because then we can learn from the wars!

Teacher: which will be....?

Student: So that we learn from our mistakes... and not fight wars?

Teacher: Now do you REALLY think that in the entire sweep of human civilisation man has really learnt anything about not fighting wars from looking at history???

Class (stifled giggles, class in choral response): NO.......

Teacher: So...?

Student: So it means we must keep learning about it!


FINAL GRADE:

Enthusiasm: A +
Intelligence: needs working on

Sunflower.

The flower is you gave me sits prettily in a vase, the leaves intact on her sturdy stem, framing the splendour of her bright yellow petals.

It's beautiful - unspoilt, like a virgin bride. It's a picture of total and perfect loveliness.

I am the tainted one, with crumpled, ruffled, sat-on petals. Yet you still find me lovely.

Thank you!

Love.

Forgiveness

The poison of a grudge is coursing through my veins, and it's leaving bitter taste in the mouth. I don't like it at all - it colours my view of you.

"For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became dark and their hearts were darkened." - Romans 1: 21

These lenses through which I perceive you - these spectacles of learned skepticism and artistic snobbishness - how they colour you so!

The distaste I feel every time you worry about money and the things we need to buy, where does it come from?

"Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always hopes, always perseveres." 2 Corinthians 13: 4 - 7

What does the picture of a soulmate look like?

He protects, engages, communicates, shares and empathises, no?

I fear that I cannot see past your small-minded worries and anxieties; I know that behind the mask of husband and provider is a soul I can touch, and hopefully effect some change to. Why can't I see it?

I'm sorry for doing this - spilling my bitterness out in words like this. I feel as though this - this act of publishing secret thoughts - betrays you somewhat. I know one day you just might read all this and think to yourself - "why smile and tell me everything is hunky-dory when it obviously isn't?" or worse: "did she have to publish this for the whole wide world to see?"

But I know you won't read it. Many people will - but you, my husband-to-be will have better things to do than to trespass on the mental landscapes of your own wife.

For better or worse, till death do us part, my love. I will learn to love you as I love myself. As for you, will you also learn to forgive me for wishing I could love you more passionately than I do right now?

Careless.

At dinner

Him: So what happens if you stay after June?

Her: I guess I'll have to take over the prac crit paper for Lit.

Him: What's prac crit?

Her: It's the unseen element in the Literature A-level examination - there are 3 papers in total - 2 on set texts and 1 on unseen - that's the prac crit paper.... and ...

Him: ....

I can see it when I start losing you, you know that? When the pupils in your eyes constrict - you avert your gaze -
towards your inward mind - I can hear the clicks of your mental abacus, processing how much you have left this week to spend.... why engage me in conversation if you are going to stop paying attention after 3 seconds?

Such perfunctory attempts.... it makes me sick.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, my love.

I am careless with your things, and the things you give me - the sat-on sunflower you trudged through Tanjong Pagar to buy for me, the cracked mobile phone, the mounted kerbs in your Hyundai -

but you, you are careless with my emotions.

Which is the greater sin?

Pawned.

"Sorry, I may not let you go after all in June."

"What?!"

The intricate power play between the principal of a premier newly independent junior college in Sinapore and the teacher deployment unit of the Ministry of Education.

I'm Malcolm in the middle. 17 vacancies, and MOE posts 5.

I'm the bargaining chip - "How can they take teachers away from us (referring to me) and not give us any good teachers in return?"

Dawning realisation that in the game of human resource deployment, I'm merely a pawn on the chessboard offered as a bait, nothing more.

Urgent letter of appeal to deputy director, signed by Principal.

Message: She stays, HQ has no right to claim her if they are unprepared to let an independent school poach from the mainstream.

Tough talk. Chips on the table. Negotiation.

I've been pawned.