Thursday, April 16, 2009

Introspect

Why do people think so much? Why do I think so much?

Well, this afternoon, I've finally answered the second question. Why do I think so much?

I guess I think a lot about life and about my life because I want to convince myself that I'm a good person. Who doesn't want to be a good person? Well, I don't know about you but I sure do.

I guess I've not really lived the past 15 years of my life in the most fulfilling manner, or at least, in a fun way. I've spent most of my time well, slacking or dwelling needlessly on my problems. I'm an imperfect person. And well, though I see all my imperfections, I can't seem to clearly identify my talents or strength. As a result, I've been searching my past actions to dig out evidence of my strengths. And when i can't find that evidence, i find excuses to think about things more. Well, I haven't found much of the evidence i'd wanted. so yeah... Guess that has really taken it's toll in the past 3 years.

People often say that being a teenager is extremely difficult. I've even heard someone comment that even if he were paid a million dollars, he wouldn't relive his life as a teenager. The life of a teenager essentially revolves around one goal, that is, to find one's self. To realize our identity. People usually refer to this as understanding ourselves.

Now this process of understanding ourselves is not painless. Well, it may be to really optimistic people but generally, it's a painful process. Well, i guess we can say that the extent of the pain in directly proportionate to the degree of optimism a person has. The more optimistic one is, the less he suffers. That's how i understand it anyways.

Why is the process painful? Well, to understand ourselves, we are forced to see ourselves as we really are. All our strengths, imperfections, weaknesses, fears, desires laid bare. For some people, accepting their weaknesses, fears, and desires may not come easily.

Everyone wants to be a good person, our weakness makes us 'less good' in a sense. For example, a weakness such as not being resilient may lead a person to think that he is not as good as he is supposed to be. This is especially so in our society today. Well, at least in Singapore.

Teachers drill into us moral values and 'desirable' attributes. They basically give us a table with two columns headed, good traits and bad traits. For example, under the 'good traits' column we find: resilience, patience, perseverance, compassion. Inversely, under the 'bad traits', we find things like, thinking with our emotions, undisciplined, giving up easily, and being emotionally 'weak' eg. crying a lot.

Hence, students tend to think that if they possess the qualities under the 'good traits' column they are a good person because they have the qualities that they are supposed to have. If they don't possess them, well, they may think that they are an inferior person as they don't even have the traits that a person should have. Well, maybe it's just me but i think this is true.

So i guess being optimistic really helps to lessen the pain truth inflicts. Now another question comes to mind, why are some people optimistic and some pessimistic? Is it nature or nurture?

Well, I'm toot tired of blogging liao so I won't bother to ans tt question now. Maybe another time. So I'm trying my best to swallow the hard truth ~ i wasn't as strong as i had thought.

Posted by Claire at 9:02 PM