House of many colours

Truth is all about perspective. Everyone comes to their own conclusions based on the knowledge and experience accrued through the living of their lives, and there is no opinion that is without value.

There was a quiet boy, surely one of many, who rested comfortably within a house built with walls of ambiguity. The walls were painted with a myriad of shimmering colours, making it a most pleasing house to behold. This house stood on a land where the weather alternated between heavy torrential rains and unbearable droughts caused by the heat of the sun. As a result many strangers came to his house seeking shelter. The boy welcomed them in and often would make banter with these people. He listened attentively to them as they spoke, made scarce judgement on the quality of their speech. However, the strangers left as soon as the natural conditions became better, some on their way to important business, some unable to bear their host's uncomfortable silence.

We are often told not to be haughty and judge others. There is however, a difference between hiding behind ideals and embracing them. We are to judge, not in pride but in humility, and we are never to make the assumption that our judgements can be final and unerring. The boy knew these words, but understood them little, choosing instead to forgo judgement as well as the opposition and antagonism that came with it. Perhaps he should have realized that without making judgements and being proud of your opinion, he was also without anything to believe in or any ideals to stand for. He recalls with a bittersweet feeling, the time when he was called 'spineless' by a good friend, and thinks that he might be a bit slow to realize things.

Even when he did feel something was wrong, he often found himself lacking in courage to express what he thought or fight against it. He often spoke words in great volumes but they lacked meaning. Maybe he had his reasons. Maybe the circumstances were not good. Perhaps it might've been better if he'd been given a second chance. But second chances come few and far between, we should rejoice to God when they do. Perhaps and maybe are the last words in the dictionary that lead to a success.

In difficult issues that are at times ambiguities that we cannot discern for our lack of perspicacity and wisdom. More often than not though, there are rights and wrongs in the matter that we can see, and no amount of debating will change this. Each time you forego a judgement, what you believe in takes a blow, and when it has taken enough blows, that belief will die. When something you believe in dies, a part of you turns to nothingness, and if you make no judgements, you will eventually become nothing. What is a human being without nothing to believe in? An ornament of nature that exists without change, a shadowy figure that cannot stand the light of day, a vine that must climb up the strong back of trees to reach the light of day, because it has no strength to stand up on its own and fears to fall to the darkness of the forest floor...

The walls of that house, those multi-coloured walls of ambiguity are peeling and crumbling to the unbearably bright sunlight and the tragic, brutal force of the monsoons. The boy knows this. He's felt the warmth that comes with speaking out loud to strangers and sharing the way he thinks, and hopes to build a new house with sturdier walls, lest he be drowned and his old house swept away by the next rains.

Everyone has a different perspective on life and its multitude of problems. Anyone who believes in something will see are rights and wrongs to these issues, regardless of how many 'maybes' or alternative perspectives he is able to see. They'll fight for the things that they believe in, and the fight for these things is the same thing as a fight between life and death itself.

Kader was explaining the idea of deconstructionism to me at the Esplanade, and we both felt that there was a certain beauty to the elements of freedom and ambiguity within it. It provokes me to think that as a race, we have always found ambiguity beautiful and artistic. It is because artists use ambiguity to hide deep and meaningful things. Ambiguity as a means to an end is admirable. Ambiguity as a way of life and as creed in interpreting books and issues in our lives only destroys the real life within us and in our world, which I think has less to do with respiring and moving, and more to do with believing and the feelings associated with those beliefs.

I remember the time when Dom was pushing for changes to debate society to make it more happening, more sociable and in sync with the flow of the school's community. I remember thinking that this was not a bad idea though I did not agree with it, and I opposed it then with a minimum of force, not able to articulate to myself why I felt it was wrong. The answer was quite simple really. A CCA does not become outstanding among its peers by ingratiating itself with the other CCAs and spending its efforts on socializing, despite the school support it could eventually garner. It becomes truly outstanding by working towards and ultimately becoming good at what it is supposed to be about, and when its members become proud of it and are not afraid to speak up for it and themselves.