On Going Home

Having lived in the States for more or less six years, it is not uncommon to find myself nostalgic of my home city. On disembarking at Hong Kong International Airport, a sign "Arrival" hanging from the ceiling strikes me as familiar yet so foreign. It is a bright-blue sign. Neither of those letters, however, reminds me of the States nor England. From the font type of the letters, the colour of the sign, my native language under the English word "Arrival", they generate in me a sense of excitement and delight. But why does such a place where I had lived for the first sixteen years of my life provoke in me such genuine pleasure? Perhaps it is because it offers convincing evidence of my having arrived at a place which is of great sentimental value to me. It reminds me of a simple fact: I am home.

The day before I take off from Houston every summer, I usually stay up the whole night in order to be able to sleep on the plane. My insistence on staying up, however, may be worthy of some degree of suspicion because sleeplessness always happens to be my symptom on the plane. Perhaps it is just a terrible excuse, an excuse invented to make up for my intense excitement of going home and my reluctance to take sleeping pills.

After having an unpleasant breakfast at McDonald, I find myself on the plane patiently waiting for the pilot's announcement. Plugging my earphones into my iPod, it is playing Michael Buble's "Home". As soon as every soft tune of the song charms my ears, I notice an unbearable weight is pulling down my eyelids.

I wake up from the state of nothingness. The pilot is announcing that the plane will arrive at Honolulu in less than an hour. As soon as I become conscious, a charming lady seated next to me offers me a gum. This particular occasion suddenly reminds me of Fight Club. In the film, Jack (Edward Norton) reminds us that everything on the plane is single-serving. So on this plane, I meet my single-serving friend. Strangers on the plane may talk to you for various reasons. Conversations may start off by the offering of a gum or a book that you are reading. The reasons are totally random. On this occasion, perhaps my single-serving friend just longs for some company out of boredom. From our conversation, I know that she is a student who is always passionate about science at the University of Boston flying back to her home, Honolulu. She explains to me in the minutest details about her hatred of the urbanity in Boston and how she longs to go back to Honolulu whenever time allows her to do so. Her descriptions about the palm trees, the clear skies, the white beaches, the diversity of fauna and flora, all these hint at why she is a biology student. A while after her effortless talking, she is finally interested in me and asks what I am studying. For the first time in my life, I fail to notice the confused look which suggests my eccentricity from her. Time passes by mercilessly when one wishes to exchange information through the lumpiness of language. As soon as the plane lands, we walk out of the gate door together and that is when she says, 'see you around'. This expression is probably the most polite form of saying goodbye. The word "around" invites us to the paradox of the possibility, however slim, of running into each other soon and at the same time sadly offers conclusive evidence of us never seeing each other again.

Driven by the precaution of the tasteless single-serving meal on plane, I decide to lunch at a pseudo yet the best French restaurant in the airport. As soon as the waitress takes me to the corner table, I begin to observe people who are lunching around me. If observing people fascinates me, it is perhaps because it is one of my main sources of inspirations of what to write. I do not feel ashamed of my eccentricity when curiosity demands it. There is no practical reason for my scrutiny of people's behaviours, but only that I often harbour a confused wish whether I could be one of those pioneers who discovers hitherto unfathomable truths. The restaurant is located at one of those corners in the airport. This geographical location enforces the atmosphere of loneliness. No one is talking. Everyone is either reading his book with a glass of red wine or busy emailing his business partners with a half-finished sandwich. I gaze past one another at the serving counter. At that moment, I am sure my trivial existence is of no significance to anyone. I believe I am seated among insentient creatures.

I look at the menu, choices are limited, it leaves me no room for reflective delight but to order a Chicken Spaghetti. While awaiting my order, there is a gentle feeling unfolding within me, namely, loneliness. This is, however, a pleasant form of loneliness. Rather than being embarrassed by laughter and fellowship, I inwardly derive a masochistic pleasure from the presence of an analogous feeling. I am eating in a place where conversational poverty is acknowledged and the longing for friendship is brutally celebrated.

My order arrives. Unexpected, the sauces are not built on compromise. The sauces blur the distinction between the chicken and the spaghetti hence the disruption of flavour. Neither the chicken nor the spaghetti stands out. Slices of chicken are not arranged in order. The amount of cheese and spaghetti leaves no sign of symmetry. The dish reveals not a sense of simplicity and cleanliness. For the first time, I crave for the single-serving meal on plane.

It is about time to board the plane so I pay the bill and rush to the gate door. The unpleasant meal, however, is unable to diminish my excitement of going home. I get on the plane, embarking on the journey to my final destination.

During the unbearable thirteen hours, my neighbours snore effortlessly, flight attendants serve diligently, and movies are shown continuously. I spend most of my time reading, listening to music, and drifting in and out of consciousness. There are times when we are disturbed by the air turbulence. Occasionally, during air turbulence, while our pilot reminds us of tightening our seat belts, I secretly wish for disasters. If disasters suddenly become my wishful desire, it is perhaps because I am too impatient with my boredom. I wish to derive a peculiar form of pleasure from disasters. Nevertheless, it never happens. I wake up from the announcement that the plane will arrive at the Hong Kong International Airport in fifteen minutes.

I pick up my backpack, say goodbye to the pilot and flight attendants, walk out of the aircraft, looking up at the bright-blue sign, silence becomes an excuse for my inarticulacy of the feeling of excitement and delight. I am glad that I am home.

The journey of going home may be considered our outlook on life. When we travel or go on business trips, we often find ourselves ending up in different airports. During our stay at airports, there may be periods of anguish, self-hatred, and boredom. Flights may delay. Severe weather may render us inevitable to stay overnight at the airport. Souvenir shops may be unforgiving, bringing out blemishes and offering a lack of variety of choices. Despite of all these miseries, we nevertheless manage to get on our plane. During the journey on our plane, we may experience air turbulence or if we are in bad luck, a disaster. On the other hand, we may also meet strangers, strangers who may be able to share our interests and fathom our soul. We have our flight attendants who never forget to serve us meals and when in need, some junk food and a cup of water are offered to fulfil our hunger and quench our thirst. We have our pilot who always reminds us of taking precautions when possible danger is necessarily to be confronted. By the time we get out of the plane, anxieties are consoled and worries are solved. Because we reach our final destination.

Imagine all these little things happened in the airport and on the plane are the things that you may encounter in life. If transition at airports stands for different stages in life, our flights being delayed for adversity, having an unpleasant meal for uncertainties of future, the pilot for our fathers, flight attendants for our mothers, strangers we meet on the plane for the people we meet in life, air turbulence for obstacles, no matter what we encounter and what we do, we are still excited about approaching our final destination. At this point, Freud's theory of death instinct cannot be more obvious. However happy we are in different places, there is always one unchanging fact. We all long to be home. We all came into existence from the state of nothingness. In the end, we return to nothingness. Our existence is our journey of going back to where we belong.

Next time when someone close passes away, rather than letting ourselves burst into tears and mourn at the funeral, we should celebrate his death and be glad that he is finally home.

W

On Sleeping

I have been experiencing occasional sleeplessness and have not been able to fall asleep until three or four in the morning no matter how tired I am. So great and powerful is the invention of sleeping pills, they have become my salvation army over the past two weeks.

If the paradox of sleeping always fascinates me, it is perhaps because it offers a wholly different form of pleasure. The pleasure we derive from sleeping is far removed from the pleasures we derive from our secular desires. It depends not on the firing of neurons between the sensory cells under our skin, but on the absence of consciousness and the presence of dreams. Little wonder insomnia is our worst nightmare.

Night after night, we lose interest in being conscious and endeavour at our best to put our minds at ease. The scene of Fight Club strikes us as familiar that Jack (Edward Norton) suffers insomnia and narcolepsy simultaneously which he eventually has to open himself up in pathetic cancer groups, something stronger which he can latch onto, so he can sleep like a baby. If we so dislike being awake, it may be because the horrors of the nightmares are better than the reality which haunts us like a vast ocean of anguish. Our hatred of consciousness is also worthy of our sad suspicion because it suggests that it is something invented to make up for our lack of courage to deal with sorrows and anxieties which we encounter at work and therefore falsely raised to a status superior to consciousness itself. It is just a terrible excuse of our reluctance to bravely confront the cruel reality.

The British philosopher Mark Vernon confirms my point. He invites us to the story which Freud tells in "The Interpretation of Dreams":

"..., he tells the story of a father whose son has died. While asleep one night, he dreams that his son is standing by his bed mouthing haunting words: 'Father, can't you see that I am burning?' The father awakes. He smells real burning. Horrified, he realises that a candle has fallen on the shroud covering his son's corpse and it is on fire."

According to Freud's theory, Vernon believes that dreaming exists to keep us asleep. The father only woke up to put out the fire on the corpse in the stage where unconsciousness was impossible. I am no stranger to this theory. I once dreamed of a couple of men opening fire at me. Only when I woke up, I found out the weather was too jealous of me so comfortably lying in my bed, therefore rather than letting my alarm clock go off, it decided to pull me back into reality by throwing a tantrum at me with a thunderstorm. This experience of mine suggested even a few wounds by gun shots in a dream were more pleasant that being woken up by the power of nature.

Is sleeping so desirable that we should habitually perform it once a day? Do we really dream our worries away during our sleep? If you are familiar with philosophy, you should not find countless stories about Socrates meditating until early in the morning strange. There are so many confusions and ambiguities in life. Dealing with life like the complexity of a spider web, it is often better to just let our worries bury deep down into our unconsciousness during our sleep. But Socrates was not satisfied. There was obviously something which troubled him so much which he had to clarify the blurry distinctions of truth and falsehood. Rather than letting us become men who were deprived of the great virtue, he urged us to investigate our worries and attempt to solve them.

What does this tell us? Our desire to sleep is not so much related to our physical health, but rather our mental health. Driven by the financial necessity of the modern world, our days are dense with meetings and projects. There is hardly any leisure not because we work harder, but but because our leisure is as strenuous as our work. Motivated by the obsession with fame and power, employers strive hard to exploit the best of us to bring out the worst of them. Our busy days are filled with such futilities which do not allow us to have time for slow thought out of which wisdom is distilled. We only wish every night to put our minds at rest by dreaming even if dreams transform into nightmares. But our sleeplessness suggests that some worries are not allowed to be put away just by a shrug of the shoulder. They are destined to be solved by our rational minds. Sleeplessness keeps us from being ordinary. It keeps us from being satisfied with a timid soul. It perhaps at times reminds us of the fact that we may be great thinkers. After all, we need sleeplessness in order to fall asleep. Just a thought.

W

Did Alexander McQueen Die Well?

In The Memory of Alexander McQueen (16 March 1969 – 11 February 2010)

11 February 2010. It was the day which passed us by like any other day. This day, however, shocked the world of fashion. The renowned fashion designer Alexander McQueen was found dead in his apartment hanged. Many of us are horrified by the idea of death. When someone attempts suicide, we often sympathise the victim as if the world suffers a big loss. However, if the German philosopher Nietzsche were still alive, he would suggest the otherwise. He would remind all of us that there is something inherently beautiful about death. That a good death may re-define a person's life. McQueen's death is nevertheless to most of the people a tragedy, but did he die at the right time as Nietzsche suggested?

We may, after encounters with misfortunes, ponder upon whether there is any reason to cherish our trivial existence but at the same time we may be also sadly suspicious of the fact that no one would give our absence for more than a minute's thought. Motivated by this melancholy temperament, we often harbour a confused wish whether we can control our own death so everyone will remember us. But after an exhausting and fruitless contemplation, our Darwinian impulse always prevents us from doing so and our existence is so insignificant that the thought of dying well is often simply a matter of sheer luck.

But Nietzsche proposes that the difficult art of dying well can be mastered. In his celebrated work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he speaks of two admirable deaths, namely, the voluntary death and the consummating death. The idea of the voluntary death speaks for itself. It is the sort of death we wish which we may now call suicide. But according to Nietzsche, there is more to it. If we are to die well, we must die at the right place at the right time. What does that mean? Nietzsche explains it clearly,

'He who has a goal and an heir wants death at the time most favourable to his goal and his heir. And out of reverence for his goal and his heir he will hang up no more withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life.'

The consummating death is also involved with the timing and place, but the theme of timing is more exemplified in this idea:

'The man consummating his life dies his death triumphantly, surrounded by men filled with hope and making solemn vows. Thus one should learn to die: and there should be no festivals at which such a dying man does not consecrate the oaths of the living! To die thus is the best death.'

This passage seems to suggest that the person should acquire a degree of fame which everyone will affirm his influence by the time he dies. And his influence should either be on a global scale or strong enough to change our outlook on certain things in the world. Great artists and scientists should be well-fit for this category in terms of fame, but scarcely they died at the right time.

There is an interesting fact to notice what differs Nietzsche from the rest of us. When it comes to the idea of dying well, we often assume it depends on why the person dies. If a soldier died in a war because he fought hard for our country, we would like to think that his death was heroic and therefore dying well. However, Nietzsche invites us to the thought that how a person dies can be as important as the question of why.

Let us turn to McQueen. Does his death fulfil Nietzsche's criterion of dying well? Perhaps a little biography of his life is needed. McQueen's life was the kind of life which often triggers our jealousy. He was born in London and knew from a very early age that he wanted to be a fashion designer. After he left school around the age of sixteen, he acquired an apprenticeship at the traditional Saville Row tailors Anderson and Shephard. He also moved to the theatrical costumiers Angels and Bermans where he mastered six methods of pattern cutting. After finishing his master degree at St. Martins, he embarked upon the journey of becoming one of the most respected designers in the world.

If you watched any of his fashion shows before, you would be in awe of the beauty, creativity, and artistry he was capable of producing. If fashion shows meant anything to McQueen, they would be a means to displaying his own genius and nothing else. He had no patience with all the scrutiny regarding the practicality of fashion. He did not just transform clothes into a fancy name called fashion, but also urged us upon an irrefutable fact. That his fashion is a work of art which we should appreciate it on its own terms. Many times we witnessed in his fashions shows the designs which most of us are unable to wear on the streets. Because they are not designed to be worn. We are compelled to arrive at the conclusion that McQueen was not just a fashion designer, but also an artist. If there were any museum of fashion, McQueen's collections would have been taken up a huge section in there. His genius did not just restrict to clothes, but also the stage he presented his designs. His runway shows were also a means of expressing his creativity. A recreation of a shipwreck for his spring 2003 collection, spring 2005's human chess game and his fall 2006 show, "Widows of Culloden", McQueen confronted us with a holistic picture of what fashion should be. That in order to appreciate fashion, we must also appreciate the stage which gives way to manifest the elegance and divinity of the things that repeatedly have intimacy with our physical bodies. McQueen has revolutionised our concept of fashion. He has pushed us into revising the conventional thought that fashion is merely clothes imbued with style. He has showed us, with his knowledge of the six methods of pattern cutting, how clothes can express human beauty at its fullest which no fashion designer had ever done it before. He has re-defined fashion.

So far our analysis seems to suggest that McQueen's death is fit for Nietzsche's criterion. It leaves us in doubt whether his death fulfills Nietzsche's standard of 'time most favourable to his goal and his heir' since we do not know what he would have achieved if he were still alive. But his death definitely comes at the time which 'surrounded by men filled with hope and making solemn vows' because his impact on the fashion world is indisputably profound. McQueen was a 'man consummating his life who dies his death triumphantly'. His death is also fit for Nietzsche's definition of voluntary death because he wished it. It seems we should therefore be driven to the conclusion that McQueen did die well. Did he?

But I am afraid there is something missing in Nietzsche's idea of dying well because he fails to explore the question of how at its fullest. His puzzle is incomplete. I am therefore here to piece all the parts together so we can look at the whole picture. Nietzsche forgets to mention the method a person should choose to die if he is to die well. If voluntary death is to be included in the art of dying well, the art of suicide is then necessary to be mastered as well. The method a person should choose to die is no trivial matter. It involves with a person's morale and dignity. McQueen was found hanged in his apartment. But what does the act of hanging imply? The fashion master, though displayed skilful craftsmanship and genius in fashion, seemed to want to venture the chance to shrug off his artistic talents in the realm of suicide. Out of all methods of suicide, only Seppuku suggests that there is something noble and beautiful about the act of killing oneself. First, the victim must dress himself in white robes and have his favourite meal. And he should, with his sword on a desk, compose a death poem to honour the activity he is about to perform. Afterwards, he should have his assistant ready holding his sword. Then he will open his robes and pull out a short dagger to cut his stomach open. His assistant will then offer a fatal decisive blow at his head. Modern readers may be horrified by this ritual, but it offers dignity and gives the victim a noble reason to withdraw himself from this filthy, secular world. On the other hand, we often witness convicted criminals being persecuted by hanging. But should the fashion master be seen with these unforgiven scums on equal terms?

What can we say about McQueen's death? His death nevertheless lives up to Nietzsche's standard because he successfully earned respect from other fashion designers and influenced our way of looking at fashion before he passed away. From now on, we do not just look at clothes that merely shield us off from severe weather and give us style, but also re-define fashion as a work of art. Plato was wrong. McQueen has showed us that art does not exist to imitate nature. He, like Oscar Wilde, has urged us upon the fact that it is nature that actually imitates art. There is an insatiable desire buried deep in our heart to long for perfection, something that lies light years away from the reality, but through art, we can naively lavish our faith on our hopes. Lovers in reality often long for kisses that are witnessed in the Hollywood films. They wish to experience kisses as seen by Rodin. In like manner, we go on diet in hope of achieving the body ratio of those classical statues so we can carry McQueen's clothes.

Though McQueen failed to execute the art of dying well at its richest and fullest, his death is nonetheless considered a good death. He has cultivated our fashion sense and at the same time suggested that some deaths are not tragedy at all. Sometimes, in fact, they are worthy of celebration.

"Many die too late and some die too early. Still the doctrine sounds strange: 'Die at the right time.'... Die at the right time: thus Zarathustra teaches."- Friedrich Nietzsche

W

P.S. I owe my inspiration of this article to one of the articles in the latest issue of Philosophy Now, "Dying At The Right Time" by Morgan Rempel.

I, the lonely walker (finished)

The following article is referred from http://www.libertines.hk/:

My words have long escaped me. For how long, I can no longer recall. This time, however, I feel a burning desire to write, to record my feeling, at least this one time.

Says Nietzsche, "When you gaze into an abyss long enough, the abyss gaze back into you." I have spent 3 yeas of tertiary education on learning what "business" is. Slowly, I become one of those who are too rich to think and, in the mean time, too poor to care. I became the monster I used to fight. I feel that there were thoughts but none could be spoken out, as if it's a kind of punishment for lies in Dante's hell. They have not ceased to exist nevertheless.

Since the last time I went to the conference in Taiwan, I have started to realize the joy of traveling alone. What inspirations followed were Seoul and Guangzhou (to see my grand parents). At first, I was wary about the risks and uncertainties about planning what to bring, what to tender. I could not refrain the looking at my watch to make sure everything was and would happen just as planned.

At the third time, when I returned from GZ, I decided not to care. I hired a taxi and had it carried me to the train station. I checked in and there were plenty of time left. So, I walked around in the duty-free shops, and took a look at those overpriced tax-free merchandise. There were alcohols and tobacco, but too few to mention compared to the ones in the oh-so-proud Beijing Airport. I strolled into the bookstore, and was quickly annoyed by the lunar New Year tunes (I bet they were as old as time, seriously) and the simplified Chinese characters. So, I decided not to give a shot to her GDP growth, and plugged in my earphone and sat down. It was playing Mr. Children’s “Hanabi”.

I looked around and observed other visitors. There were very few people, probably because it was a night, which we were supposed to be staying with our parents. There were weary businessmen. There were some foreigners waiting silently for the boarding gate to open. There was no one who knew me; there was no one who can tell about my past, and there was no one who can judge who I was. As I had no past before them, I had no guilt. I was just anyone. This was freedom, bliss and an excitement that’s hardly imaginable. Amongst these people, I was insignificant, and so they were to me. Things, which used to strike me hitherto and thither to, were as light as feather, and as invisible as air. Time mattered no one. I was just living at the moment while the arrow of time paused flying. The abyss no longer haunted me, as if I was in another dimension. Then I lit up a cigar and waited outside the train. I waited for the final call of the haul and I stepped back into the train. I picked up a few pieces of trash paper and began writing this note. After writing for a while, my eyelids abstained from looking at the outside world.

When I woke up from the announcement, I was told I would arrive my home city in less than an hour. The city lights outside were passing with haste mercilessly. I was drained quickly back into time. I tried to sleep again but I couldn't, as I was overwhelmed by the reality: what I saw and felt were mere constellations that lied light-years away. Looking at the views outside, I asked myself whether this was the right train; Be it yes or no, life goes on. It was playing Journey's "Don't stop believing" in my iPhone.

Some Random Thoughts On Writing

After reading the first two chapters of 'On Writing Well' by William Zinsser, I would like to lay down some of my random thoughts on writing.

• The author says 'rewriting is the essence of writing.'- I used to disagree with this statement since I initially thought that rewriting made my original essay worse. However, I have not realised until today that I have been rewriting my old essays for the past two weeks such as 'On Birthday' and 'On Useless Knowledge'. Both of them I attempted to write in my old blog before, but they were added with new materials and presented in a more elegant and beautiful manner in this new blog.

• Another author named Dr. Brock who Zinsser mentions in the book says that he does not write when he is in bad mood. But Zinsser suggests the otherwise. 'If your job is to write every day, then you should learn to do it like any other job.' Zinsser also mentions that writing is not an art, but a craft, and a professional writer must by all mean stick to it every day. - I am afraid I cannot wholly subscribe to Dr. Brock's opinion. All the arts, including paintings, literature, poems, music, and films, are best when written in pessimistic moods. I do not think Shakespeare could write such great works his life was surrounded by happiness. John Wilmot could not write such good poems if he did not feel remorse for his too much engagement in sexual pleasure. There would be no blue period if Picasso was not beset by melancholy. Beethoven could not produce such heavenly tunes that contain such intellectual and emotional depth if his life was free from obstacles. As to whether Zinsser is right, I am not so sure at the moment. But I tend to agree with him that practice breeds perfection. No one is born to be a good writer. We have to keep rewriting our works to achieve the status of divinity.

• The last thing is Zinsser's hatred of meaningless jargons and useless terminologies. It always fascinates me when writers from the academia, like most German philosophers, fall in love with jargon. They do not only invite confusions to their readers, but also lead us to suspect whether they actually mean what they say. So thought-provoking and interesting are the thoughts their philosophy generates, the necessities of jargon have even rendered me more curious. Zinsser further goes on to say, 'the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what.' This reminds me of George Orwell's golden rules laid down in 'Politics and English'. Zinsser, like Orwell, condemns political and business writings in the highest degree. On this, I cannot agree more. But I have started to doubt some of these rules after I encountered the works of Alain de Botton's. He is a writer who clearly understands how to employ the 'art' of writing. He is also in the habit of using 'fancy' words which seems too far from obeying rules such as 'Every word that serves no function' and 'Every long word that could be a short word'. But de Botton invites us to an alternative way to perceive writing. He introduces to us a quality called 'beauty'. He urges us to feel rather than just read, to hold on to the beauty of words so they do not just speak to our minds, but communicate with our souls. He grasps our natural temperament and humanises every inanimate object to overwhelm us, compels us to confront sublimity superior to ourselves. It may be good to follow the advice of Zinsser's, yet it is divine to write like de Botton.

Just a few thoughts.

W

On Artificiality

At the beginning of the Enlightenment period, modern science started to flourish and replace our religious worldview with a secular worldview. Along with the introduction of scientific technique, the West had undergone the Industrial Revolution. Machines replaced the gods as the objects of worship. Capitalism became the virtue practised by factory owners and business men.

However, from the latter part of the eighteenth century down to the present day, our world has been influenced by a way of feeling which may be called 'the romantic movement'. As men have assimilated themselves to machines, a group of people has emerged. They wish to revert us back to our natural impulse. Their praise of nature, however, is not itself natural. It is a reaction against too much artificiality and machines. They condemn reason and value passion. Their allegiances are to art and emotion.

This theory has increasingly gained support from some feminists regarding the beauty of women. As our scientific technique has become more advanced, the aesthetic ideal of the classical Greeks is no longer an utopian dream. Women, with the help of surgical doctors, discover a new way to enhance their beauty. However, their wish to transform their appearance by means of plastic surgery is not in accordance with the ideology which most feminists hold. They wish to, like Nietzsche, interpret every bit of positive sentiment as a bid for power. Men, they claim, are by nature a shallow species. They only find women in appearance rather than in quality. Therefore, women's need to artificially enhance their beauty is considered a submission to men. They lack the courage to embrace their original beauty as it is. Among theses two distinguished species of humans, these feminists sincerely inquire, who has power over whom? But what strikes me as curious is the fact that they often wear makeup when they speak of such provocative statement on television.

What else is wrong with being artificial? Reason always remains the biggest enemy to the romantics because it suppresses our sentiments from being freely expressed. But all civilisation, especially on its aesthetic side, is artificial. Good food will lose its flavour if it is not presented in an elegant and beautiful manner. Good music will fail to charm our ears if all musical instruments are made with primitive tools. Good writing will no longer delight our eyes if we abandon the art of calligraphy. Good dancing will no longer let us appreciate the beauty of bodily movements if it is not performed in a certain 'order'. All these things give grace to life because they are artificial. In the French Revolution, the French valued the extremity of violence and passion rather than compromise and negotiation and preferred to have the heads of the aristocrats cut off rather than diminishing their power. But reason depends not on the denial of natural impulses, but on allowing them to express themselves in a way that are more delightful than primitive sentiments. Reason seeks to refine these sentiments which will bring delicacy rather than vulgarity.

But men's blind worship of machines have urged us to focus on the resulting product of work rather than the work itself. Our employers only speak of quantity, but not of quality. They turn us into commodities which we are no longer able to display our human faculty during the production of work. We are living in a world where the purpose of drinks is to quench our gross thirst, food to only satisfy our hunger, writing to get our message across even if it means to be presented in vulgar language, and education to only ensure our success in career and destroy curiosity and culture.

Living in a commercially driven world is itself a tragedy. Business men and politicians no longer care for the sorrows of the general public, instead they devote themselves entirely to the pursuit of power. Teenagers no longer care whether they have artistic talents before they make up their minds to get on television shows like American Idol. They only seek to achieve fame in one night. We are doing this because we love power and fame more than beauty. There are other sides of human nature that are equally praiseworthy. But the world, unfortunately, is becoming more regressive. I, for one, do not know how it should be resolved.

'Where there is delight in a process, there will be style, and the activity of production will itself have aesthetic quality.' -Bertrand Russell

W

On Birthday

October 1st. It may just be another day which you look out of the window in your office impatiently waiting for it to be emptied out at six. This day, however, is of some significance to me. It reminds me that my trivial existence is worthy of celebration. Which suggests that there is something inherently admirable in the process of ageing. It reminds me that I am one step closer to my final destination. It is my birthday.

But why do we celebrate our birthday? Are we supposed to be grateful to be alive? Is life filled with hopes and dreams which are worth our struggle? Unfortunately, the facts confront us with the irrefutable. Our world is threatened by vast tragedy. There is in this world so much injustice, so much hatred, so much fear, and so much envy. Though we continue to live day by day, we are at loss what the meaning of our individual existence is. Nevertheless, every time I wander around in a bookstore and look at the bookshelves which are occupied with self-help books, it is not uncommon to find an author who is encouraging blind-optimism. They construct what seems to be compelling arguments in hope of convincing their readers to affirm life. That all of us can be as successful as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. This leads to the question whether we should celebrate our birthday.

Most of us apparently choose to celebrate birthday because we are all horrified by the idea of death. We are reluctant to admit the fact that birthday also signifies we are approaching to the final destination. Life is supposed to be joyful. We were not born to submit to the philosophy of Schopenhauer. It is better to be optimistic rather than pessimistic. I am often surprised of our capacity to imagine. But imagination is an illusion. It cordons our feeble minds off the realistic world. It deceives us into hoping for a better tomorrow. This optimism wears us down.

It is useless to escape from the irrevocableness of death. In our constant struggle between lightness and weight, we are often in muddle of the thought whether a life of lightness or a life of weight is a better option. Anyone who contemplates the details of life will necessarily be drawn to the nihilistic conclusion. That our life is full of futilities and nothing else. The facts decide which option we ought to take- the unbearable lightness. But in this acceptance of futility, however true, there is a sense of fear which is concentrated upon my individual soul night after night. This feeling torments my immortal soul, leaves me with something which I am unbearable to speak, and strengthens my only wish to liberate it from its mortal coil. In the spectacle of life and death, in the inextricable relationships of men and women, in the never-ending pursuit of our dreams, there is nothing I wish to hold on to. Little wonder the aristocrats and the members of the Royal family commissioned Rembrandt to secure their glorious days by means of portraits. Because they were aware of the fact that their fame, power, and wealth would one day become ashes and dust.

But humans always contradict themselves. We invest our faith in what we are capable of achieving. History tells us that we have produced great art, literature, music, philosophy and science that have changed minds and filled lives. Though we are surrounded by life's absurdities, our inner selves still long for the arrival of beauty to hold on to our hearts. In friendship, in romantic love, in parental affection, in compassion, in the devotion to science and the arts, there is nothing we wish to diminish. They take away all the imperfections and impurities from our souls and attend us to the idea of weight. They flower our lives with meanings and dreams.

After meditating on how we should approach our birthday, it seems difficult to know whether we should celebrate it. But Nietzsche offers us a solution: imagine a life which you live now must be lived by you for infinite times and you would have to repeat every single details in it again and again. What does that tell you? If you are to repeat the same life again and again, you may want to do something which will delight you innumerable times. This thought propels your mind to decide what you should do next. It makes you focus on the present. It urges you to revise your goals and dreams which you always hold on to. If you are at loss what you should do next, it suggests that your life is not as satisfying as it seems. This Nietzschean thought invites us to live our life at its fullest while at the same time pulls us away from the idea of lightness. That a life of little weight may be what we should desire after all.

Life is full of sweetness and bitterness. It may be a cruel fact that the amount of bitterness usually outweighs that of sweetness. But on birthday, we rejoice from the blessings of our friends, of our parents, and of our romantic partners. The contemplation of birthday not only inspires us how we should think about life, it also sheds light on how should enjoy our birthday at its fullest and richest. It keeps us from denying the spectacle of joy life wishes to offer. It keeps us from abandoning our hopes in perfection. It keeps us from thinking ourselves as the centres of the universe. It keeps us away from a morbid sense of loneliness.

W