If only

If only I wasn’t invited. If only I hadn’t attended. If only I hadn’t seen. If only I said no. If only I walked away. If only I hadn’t loved.

If only. But it’s too late now.

Agreed!

"Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, experience. In that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring."

- John Locke (1704)

Why indeed

"Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all. -Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind? Subtilise it."

Herman Melville, Moby Dick; or, The Whale

Books read in 2015

1.     The Silkworm - Robert Galbraith

2.     Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie (re-read)

3.     Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie (re-read)

4.     The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year - Sue Townsend

5.     The Sayings of Confucius - Tsai Chih Chung

6.     And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie (the play)

7.     Death of an Expert Witness - P.D. James

8.     Buried Angels - Camilla Lackberg

9.     Appointment with Death - Agatha Christie (the play)

10.   Murder in the Cathedral - T.S. Eliot

11.   The Hollow - Agatha Christie (the play)

12.   The Mousetrap - Agatha Christie (the play)

13.   Down the Darkest Road - Tami Hoag

14.    Witness for the Prosecution - Agatha Christie (the play)

15.    The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend

16.    Broken Monsters - Lauren Beukes

17.    Towards Zero - Agatha Christie (the play)

18.     Verdict - Agatha Christie (the play)

19.    Go Back for Murder - Agatha Christie (the play)

20.    Spellbound - Dominic Alexander (by Reader's Digest)

21.    Deeper than the Dead - Tami Hoag

22.    Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair - Pablo Neruda 

23.     A Certain Justice - P. D. James

24.     Death Comes as the End - Agatha Christie (re-read)

25.     The Fever - Megan Abbott

26.      Miss Marple's Final Cases - Agatha Christie

27.     A Girl is a Half-formed Thing - Eimear McBride

28.     The Origins of Zen - Tsai Chih Chung

29.     The Separation - Dinah Jefferies

30.     The Story of Psychology - Anne Rooney

31.      The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

32.      Moby Dick - Herman Melville (re-read)

33.      Great Battles - Christer Jorgensen (General Editor)

The colour grey

There's something that I can't quite figure out. And I don't like not being able to figure something out. This is the situation. This is of course an analogy and a simplification of the facts.

Miss Red always wears red clothes to work. She drives a red car, the upholstery and stuffed toys in her car are all red, her coffee mug is red, her pencil case is red, her mouse pad and mouse are red, her backpack is red; in short, almost everything she owns is red. She has outwardly shown her dislike towards other colours on numerous occasions - black is too bleak, yellow is too cheerful, pink is too girlish, etc.

One day we are all asked what our favourite colours are. Miss Red announces that her favourite colour is green. 

Green! This of course catches me by surprise. Almost cheated even. When I asked her about all her things being red, she says it's just a coincidence. She didn't mean to buy red things, but somehow all her things ended up being red. In fact, she doesn't even like the colour red.

My point of view:

(i)   At best, she unknowingly created the impression that she liked the colour red.

(ii)  At worst, she deliberately created the impression that she liked the colour red.

Miss Red's point of view:

(i)   She never told me she liked the colour red. (This is true.)

(ii)  It's my fault for assuming that she liked the colour red.

I can't decide whether it's my fault or not. I know it's wrong to assume. But in this situation I genuinely believe that any reasonable person would come to the same conclusion as I did - that Miss Red's favourite colour is red. 

I'm trying hard to give Miss Red the benefit of the doubt. This must be one of those 'grey' areas that my friend Reuben keeps harping on about. I don't like grey. I like black and white. 

This situation is making me see red. No, wait. Grey. 

Miss No Change

I know you can't change anyone. Change must come from within. But consider this.

Miss No Change had always walked to Destination X for years. As a result, she always arrived late. This would not pose a problem if Miss No Change was working alone on her own time. You see, Miss No Change was unfortunately part of a team. And her late arrival caused the other members of her team to pick up her slack in her absence.

There is a solution to this problem, which is a free train ride to Destination X. This free train ride would ensure Miss No Change would arrive on time, at no cost. It was certainly more efficient than walking.

But no. Miss No Change insists on walking because that's the way she had always travelled to Destination X. To take a free train ride would be tantamount to changing her character and upsetting the balance of her otherwise perfect life.

So she resists the free train ride. And her team members continue to pick up her slack. But to her, it is more important for her team members to work harder at her expense than for her to make a simple switch from walking to taking a free train ride.

This is how I look at it. You don't have to change for anyone. But the day your behaviour negatively affects the people around you, is the day you seriously need to ask yourself difficult questions and if necessary, change. 

As the saying goes, the only constant in life is change.

The unimportant colleague

I have a colleague who thinks he is God's gift to the company. As if the company would go bust if not for his contribution. The kind who will come to me at 6.00 p.m. when I'm packing to leave because he has to tell me something so urgent it simply cannot wait till the next day lest the world would come to an end. 

And that something would be:

i) that he will be passing some documents for me to look at tomorrow for my further action; and

ii) something that he has been sitting on for months. 

I have no idea why he can't just pass the damn documents to me (during office hours) instead of giving me this drama about passing me documents in the future. And what is so urgent about telling me he wants to pass documents to me in the future that I have to delay going home for? 

And here's the best part. The documents will not come as promised! It will only come to me when all hell is about to break loose, so that I won't have any choice but to drop everything I'm doing and attend to this matter which could've been sorted out earlier if Mr. Self-Importance had gotten his act together and given the documents to me earlier.

But he never learns, and he genuinely thinks everyone should dance to his tune because we are, after all, all just there to serve him. Which means I work according to his schedule. Which means I should drop everything to sort his mess out. Which, I suppose, makes him feel all important and significant. 

Sometimes I think God put people like Mr. Self-Importance in this world just to test the patience of ordinary people like me. Well, ordinary not very patient people like me.