Warning: a rambling post…
Ok ok, I know most of u out there are probably aghast at the title already. Most usually means the younger bunch whose version of right and wrong is still a black/white painting, the morally-upright who paints in black and white and the religious who tries.
I’m here to tell you about my black/white. When I was younger, I was all of the above. It accounted for a lot of things that happened or didn’t happen to me. I saw my world in rights and wrongs and never thought that sometimes grey is a better shade. That means most of the time, I’m almost always a moral prick who, while accepting of others their own pursuits in life, is always tramping on my own adventurous streak.
As I grew older, I often got into fights with my parents, trying to plonk my Views on them. I’d get angry from reading the newspaper about Batam chicks and their S’pore husbands, ugly divorces and murders of passion, ie hubby kills wife because of infidelity. I started viewing from a high moral standing ground while my parents tries to explain away that sometimes, just because this aunty cheated on her hubby, it’s not because she is loose, it’s because…
And then I’d stop listening. Because listening to another side of the story, the aunt’s, would incur my sympathy and understanding. I didn’t want to be understanding, understanding will tip me off my pedestal. Yea, I really was such a prick.
Given a choice between experimenting some different but choosing a stable hard cold place, I’d take the latter.
If I wasn't so myopic, I would have gotten laid when I was 16, clubbing before 18 and probably tried ecstasy during then. Would have left S'pore for an overseas education, pursue the arts rather than science. Writing plays and acting for a living. Taken dance classes and compete.
I could have been such a different person if I wasn't so afraid of being brave.
Which is why I said I was boring. I didn’t really live my life the way I wanted it. I always chose stability and necessary evil over anything else. I had frens tell me they sian-half when I told them some of my near misses. Very hurtful, frens, and all too late to change the storyline. Because of these misses, I read and derive sensationalism and dissociation by reading instead.
I wished I had taken those steps though, just to make my life go out of line, just to plunge it into uncertainty, just to experience the emotional turmoil that might follow.
Why not? There’s only one life to live. People say to learn from other’s mistakes. Perhaps in work, that’s true. But Life? How do you truly learn other’s mistakes when you aren’t living theirs? Everyone has a different approach to problem-solving, everyone has a different set of solutions and choice with each same action.
So why am I saying all these? From my ‘hunky-dory’ voice blog to an abrupt question that I might have chosen my Life choices somewhat regretfully?
Because when you live Life through learning the mistakes of others, you are living life like a watered down teh-ping. Tasteless and dull. No life experiences to concentrate the tea and lots of one-side (meaning my own side) versions of the stories/mistakes melting like ice.
I’m not advocating young gals out there to take all that life is giving, the good, the bad, the ugly. I’m just saying that life isn’t all black nor white, so listen to both sides and decide the shade of grey it should be. Make informed choices and provisions for any losses that may occur.
And accept your frens for their own choices. Only leave them when they are too extreme and are influencing you the wrong way, like drugs, wrist-cutting, paid sex, destroying your relationship with your family etc etc. you know what I mean.
Some things are just black, and that includes people.
Why the title? Because it’s true. I have found in me the capacity to be attracted, even in holy matrimony, to another person way older. And I know exactly why.
Because I like his abandonment and his joy and lack of reserve. Ironically, I like his youthful outlook in Life in one so advanced in years when I cannot like the same attitude in someone younger.
I read in a book that infidelity is being unfaithful in your thoughts. Having thoughts you don’t share with your loved one but willingly tell another.
Oops! I am confused. So was I being infidel when I was…
1) Admiring my older colleague’s chest?
2) Fantasizing about having Daniel Wu tied and strapped naked to my bed?
3) Taking second glances at some of the more distinguished-looking Profs?
4) Listening in delight at the lilting melodic Scottish burr of another older colleague?
And deciding I should tell everyone here but my own adorable A?
Huh. Tough.
And then I have read that being attracted to another person even when married is a very common occurrence. Apparently I am among the millions and am truly the norm, the bulge in the middle of their demograph. I can admire men, their bods, their looks, in the privacy of my own thoughts.
And then it says, unfaithfulness is a matter of action. As long as you don’t act on it, you are not.
How grateful I was to read about it! I did not marry the wrong man! I am not unfaithful!
What I meant to say is, really, is that I can see why C likes that guy. She and I have come a long way and in terms of being nice and decent, we could have been nuns. At the very least, I was sex-deprived and I knew it and took pains to stopper it. She, on the other hand, was pure as snow, nary a bad, red-hot thought.
And on the question of being unfaithful, of being the 3rd party, of being in society’s assumption of black, is the question of how much of the other person’s story you want to hear and accept.
Remember the tale of the Emperor with No Clothes? It could have been the story of the Bad Boy who Spoke Disrespectfully of the Emperor, or the tale of the Town who Promoted Nudity or the Tale of the Emperor and his Big Pink.... Butt, even the tale of The Year All the Sheep Died.
It is not a matter of how black or how white.
It is a matter of how far back and how little of the story you want to hear.
How much will you hear before you judge?
Out
AKK
