Beautiful Lies

Every now and then, somebody claims to receive some sort of revelation of some truth. So I better pen this down before I forget how I think when I am about 20 years old...

This post is something about truth and our predominant culture.

In our consumerist age, we are in constant search for a quicker fix to everything. We want our noodles cooked faster. We want to get from point A to point B in shorter time. If we know who we are going after, we want the relationship to be formed as soon as possible. When we are sad, we want to listen to happy songs to get us happy again ( or we want to indulge in self pity a little longer, I'll get to that later ). We want to make money quicker.

So much so, that as much as some of us do not want to agree, we are already almost living to enjoy life quicker. NOT living and enjoy life quicker... it is living TO enjoy life quicker.

As an engineering student, I am very familiar with this sort of mindset.

Got a problem? Fix it. Find the most effective method, cheapest if possible. Perhaps, if I do that to an electrical component, it is perfectly alright. However, once in a while, I live like that. Tired? Sleep. Awake? Be productive. Get on with the work.

In line with living to enjoy life quicker - I live to get more things done, to enjoy more things. Sometimes, this seeps into my relationships.

"Rate your relationship from 1 to 10"
If it is 2 with person so and so - How to you make it to 3? then to 4 and 5 and so on?

I find myself thinking of things in a way that is either good or bad - requiring improvement or not - 1 to 10.

Along with my many guy friends, we rate girls from 1 to 10. The ratio of doing that versus talking about some other thing about girls is really lopsided.

And very surely I assure you that today, this is what self help books capitalize on. How to push your mood from 1 to 10 (1 being suicidal to 10 being euphoric), how to generate a lot of money, how to be a great leader! I can hardly find anything that does not put the "self" as the main object of pleasure or benefit.

Even the reasoning for giving is goes like this:

You make a lot of money, so by doing that you become very happy ( or some New Age gurus will teach you to love money then you will attract money into your life, i.e. the order is the other way, you are happy, then money comes to you ). Then when you donate money, you are also happy.

The reasoning cannot come from the fact where, giving is the right thing to do - and we ought to "earn all we can, save all we can, and give all we can" simply because it is the right thing to do. Then our happiness comes from the fact that we know:

1) The right thing is done
2) We did the right thing
3) The right thing is good for parties involved

Before I use the word self centered too much, I better define it a little more:

self-centered
the "self" being the center of the purpose of everything being done. The primary concern is self, not others, not "what is meant to be". This does not mean others will not benefit from "self", but that simply "self" is the main topic.

What would we face should self be the main object whereby everything else is subjected to?

We often hear the phrase spoken by one party to the other "This isn't all about you". In fact, most of the time, it is about something else bigger.

"Its about US!"
"Its about the team!"
"Its for the good of everybody"

I seldom hear anybody tell themself in a willing and joyful manner "This ain't about me!". These hard words are normally spoken in a sort of enlightenment, the kind where there is frustration when we know the reality.

It hits hard - all the more harder because it tells us that we finally cannot fight the real thing - and that we knew it all along but chose to live in a way, a way that expects all the goodies that would flow to us AS IF the world revolves around us.

I always think the people who agree with me are the smartest around - until I did not think that the world revolved around me.

Then I started to think perhaps people who opposed me might be smarter. I do remember the times when I had to surrender my arguments and admit that they were telling the truth. And for me to realize that they won an argument because they were true - breaks my argument that " I am right because I am defending myself"

The weaker ones remain in self pity, the stronger ones self-vindication, yet most likely to overlook their own mistakes.

All these spring from the self-centeredness - living to enjoy things quicker is simply one form, one manifestation of this mindset.

Being an engineering student and a Christian, there are also few things I notice. As beautiful as one thing in itself may be, the more beautiful thing is the whole place where the thing is.

Imagine stepping into a house - the lights are not too bright, giving a warm an fuzzy feeling. The wall is painted baige, and the rug is brown - as the fire dances and crackles at the fireplace.

The rug might be very beautiful by itself. But it will never be able to make a person feel at home. Just as much as it may be soft and nice to lie on, it will never be able to give more than what it is on its own.

Take a radio as an example. There is the antenna, a whole bunch of circuits, and a power supply. None on its own could function anywhere close to a radio. A power supply, being 1 of the 3 components of the radio, cannot give us 33% of what we can hear from the radio. Even if I put 3 things together, but not in the right order, I would still not get a radio, not even near one.

In short, when one thing is put in its proper order according to its proper purpose; it will outweigh the sum of its parts.

put toothpaste on the toothbrush, then brush your teeth, then gargle with water. This achieves something.

Gargle with water, brush your teeth, then put toothpaste. This achieves something - too small compared to what it might otherwise achieve if it was in the proper order.

What I am arguing is that there is an aspect of design in truth. Truth is not a sum of information or facts.

Giving an example:

say, you just broke up with you 5 year girlfriend and you are as sad as anybody can ever be. As much as being happy is important - perhaps the best thing to do isn't quickly turning on happy music, hang out with friends and "forget about everything" and be happy.

There are things we want to think through - "sorry"s that we want to say. And we need time to cooldown. Review what we did. Perhaps not rush into the next relationship. And learn how not to break the next girl's heart or something. This way, we are ready for really happy things.

All too much, we are always called to achieve something. We buy motivational books. We buy books on this and on that to quickly achieve what we want in life.

But is life about quickly finding the apparent problem and fixing it? Reminds me of western doctors ( thank God for all of them ). As far as I understand from medical students, the western way to treat a sickness is to treat its symptoms. Fever? Reduce the temperature. Ache? painkiller. Of course, this might sound a little simplistic, but this would be the general philosophy of a cure.

You have intellectual capabilities, you think. As for me, I have come to learn that there is more than additions and multiplications to life. Really, helping an old lady cross the street beings joy to us not only because we contributed to the fact that somebody got from point A to point B.

The is joy attached to it, because deep in our hearts, something right was done, something loving was done. Like this, there are many other types on enjoyable things in life - that we know of involving it being something right, though it might cost... something loving, though we might not always benefit from it... yet a big part of that enjoyment we cannot explain, because it resonates with something else inside us, that is the truth.

The joy of knowing the truth and being in the truth, is one thing that beautiful lies cannot afford to give without surrendering. Surrendering its thoughts, its will, and itself.