Eyes of Fear
I've had to think quite a bit about the last post these days--well, naturally, I've had a lot of free time with which to think about it. It's the holiday season for me, after all. And come to think of it, the Corn was probably right when she chose to describe my life, as described on the blog, as rather bleak, although personally I think it's quite enough to keep anybody occupied during their non-free time.
I know what I wrote last post about the little house was extremely defeatist-sounding. As if, having seen other people take a particularly tough exam and come out invariably with A+'es, one chose to look only at the exam and not at the superb scores, and based on the fear of the exam, chose not to take the offer of a guaranteed good grade. Or maybe it sounds as if one had enrolled for a course, where if one studied very hard and if one chose to go through a very difficult exam, one was promised stunning results--but one was just too lazy to do the studying or one was afraid of, just in case, maybe not making it to the good end of the bell curve.
Of course, I know--intellectually--that God is good, that He'll never put a person through a trial they can't stand up through, that He's always there to help when asked and even when not. The thing is just that I've always been too afraid to put myself in such a situation, which raises the question of how much I actually trust Him. I suppose I have to trust Him, at any rate. I couldn't possibly believe in Him otherwise. But still--I don't know. That's the problem with difficult questions: they raise issues about which I've never thought about before, and quite frankly they seem to be little turning points in and of themselves. The kind where, if one answers honestly and well enough, it doesn't really matter what the answer is, because one has already seen enough of oneself to know what one has to do to change. Well, either one changes as a result of these sort of questions, or one just covers it up, forgets about it as quickly as one possibly can, and goes whistling on one's merry way.
Given that the Corn is the one who asked the question in the first place, there's almost no possibility of me being allowed to forget it at all. Which means that God has effectively forced me into a position where I have to change or... well, the alternative is to quit the course altogether, and I'm not about to do that. Why, I couldn't possibly answer you; it would certainly be the most convenient thing to be done in the face of this situation, and quite likely the most rational-sounding in this world where ease-of-life is the thing most sought after. On the other hand, it'd be the most irrational thing to ever do: to give up something of this magnitude just to avoid a little temporary pain... But the pain is what I fear. Well, not exactly the pain: more, perhaps, the embarrassment. Fear, to be most precise about it.
I once, a very long time ago, volunteered to tell my classmates a story, when I was seven or eight years old. It was essentially a very simple story, but I'd read it enough to have the plot, the characters, everything down pat; so when the teacher asked for somebody to tell a story, I volunteered. Halfway through, I realised there was a word I'd always wondered about the pronunciation of: in Chinese, the character for "island", dao3 is somewhat similar to the character for "plate", pan2: and that was how I'd always read it. For some reason, it was at that time that I began worrying about the pronunciation and so I asked my teacher how one said "island" in Mandarin--and bless her, the poor woman had no idea of English at all and told me to just say whatever I wanted. I eventually gave up, claimed to have forgotten the story, and went back to my seat, hugely embarrassed. I've never volunteered since to read anything in public. Not anything that I don't know thoroughly, at any rate. And even then I use "I think" or "perhaps", just in case.
And now that I've typed the above paragraph out, I'm wondering how exactly it relates to my train of thought: but it's always one of the things that pop up in my mind whenever people mention primary school, along with the Chinese teacher (when I was ten) who couldn't pronounce my given name and called me by my surname for a whole year. And the trauma of buying doughnuts from the school canteen for the first time when I couldn't produce the exact change. And the kleptomaniac who stole a total of nearly RM300 from me over a period of two or three weeks: the money was supposed to be for buying schoolbooks and paying tuition fees (in those days, the schools gave after-school, non-free tuition). And the time the teacher got so irritated by my inability to remember the books to bring on each day that she emptied out my entire schoolbag in front of the class, and I had to pick up the books after she delivered an entire discourse on the ills of forgetfulness. And there are many more equally bleak memories of my primary school days--in fact I don't think I have a single happy memory of my primary school days. Not until standard 5 and 6, when I met Chronicles and he became the first-ever best friend I ever had... and then, of course, we drifted apart in the years that followed.
Lest you now think I had, or have, a very bitter and sad life, I should probably add that it was probably mostly my fault somehow or other. I've never been exactly the life of the party--more the death of it, I should say. Old and sour, I must admit the tone is. But in the end, it all boils down to that I fear people very much. Meet somebody new, my first reaction is to try to be nice so they don't have any motivation to hurt me. Even with the Brats--I never wanted to have to hurt them. The first time I met somebody off a forum, I took along a 15cm knife in my backpack, just in case they weren't as friendly in real life as they were on MSN. (The meeting never happened since the times had been badly coordinated, fortunately for the other person.) Of course this fear disappears after awhile: but when it comes to strangers, I'm still wary. You never know, after all.
And as for God... well, I stand in awe of Him, of course. It's not like I can do otherwise. Not after studying His works for the entire past semester, not after seeing the stars up at Mt. Killer, not after seeing the people around me. But when it comes to being asked to change--yes, I know it's all for the best; yes, I know it's absolutely necessary; yes, I know if I don't change for the better I'll change for the worse. But I keep wishing I didn't have to be conscious during the process of change. In fact I'd rather think of myself as a patient and God as a surgeon--where I can just fall into an anaesthetised sleep and wake up perfectly fine; not the alternative, where I'm a house and God's the renovator: because even if the renovator knows where to knock down first so that the house doesn't quite come crumbling down, there's no way for the house to be anaethetised throughout the whole thing... and what's more, renovation is a far longer and more difficult process than surgery.
Of course the end result is also a lot more permanent and visible. But still...
Isn't there a song somewhere? Something about though one doesn't understand what's coming ahead, the eyes of faith still see that God is good... well, I've still got a long way to go before I get to that stage, very evidently. Because right now, all I see is the great coming unknown and behind that, perhaps one day I'll see God at work behind the circumstances and I'll thank Him for them. But I still see the circumstances first.
I know what I wrote last post about the little house was extremely defeatist-sounding. As if, having seen other people take a particularly tough exam and come out invariably with A+'es, one chose to look only at the exam and not at the superb scores, and based on the fear of the exam, chose not to take the offer of a guaranteed good grade. Or maybe it sounds as if one had enrolled for a course, where if one studied very hard and if one chose to go through a very difficult exam, one was promised stunning results--but one was just too lazy to do the studying or one was afraid of, just in case, maybe not making it to the good end of the bell curve.
Of course, I know--intellectually--that God is good, that He'll never put a person through a trial they can't stand up through, that He's always there to help when asked and even when not. The thing is just that I've always been too afraid to put myself in such a situation, which raises the question of how much I actually trust Him. I suppose I have to trust Him, at any rate. I couldn't possibly believe in Him otherwise. But still--I don't know. That's the problem with difficult questions: they raise issues about which I've never thought about before, and quite frankly they seem to be little turning points in and of themselves. The kind where, if one answers honestly and well enough, it doesn't really matter what the answer is, because one has already seen enough of oneself to know what one has to do to change. Well, either one changes as a result of these sort of questions, or one just covers it up, forgets about it as quickly as one possibly can, and goes whistling on one's merry way.
Given that the Corn is the one who asked the question in the first place, there's almost no possibility of me being allowed to forget it at all. Which means that God has effectively forced me into a position where I have to change or... well, the alternative is to quit the course altogether, and I'm not about to do that. Why, I couldn't possibly answer you; it would certainly be the most convenient thing to be done in the face of this situation, and quite likely the most rational-sounding in this world where ease-of-life is the thing most sought after. On the other hand, it'd be the most irrational thing to ever do: to give up something of this magnitude just to avoid a little temporary pain... But the pain is what I fear. Well, not exactly the pain: more, perhaps, the embarrassment. Fear, to be most precise about it.
I once, a very long time ago, volunteered to tell my classmates a story, when I was seven or eight years old. It was essentially a very simple story, but I'd read it enough to have the plot, the characters, everything down pat; so when the teacher asked for somebody to tell a story, I volunteered. Halfway through, I realised there was a word I'd always wondered about the pronunciation of: in Chinese, the character for "island", dao3 is somewhat similar to the character for "plate", pan2: and that was how I'd always read it. For some reason, it was at that time that I began worrying about the pronunciation and so I asked my teacher how one said "island" in Mandarin--and bless her, the poor woman had no idea of English at all and told me to just say whatever I wanted. I eventually gave up, claimed to have forgotten the story, and went back to my seat, hugely embarrassed. I've never volunteered since to read anything in public. Not anything that I don't know thoroughly, at any rate. And even then I use "I think" or "perhaps", just in case.
And now that I've typed the above paragraph out, I'm wondering how exactly it relates to my train of thought: but it's always one of the things that pop up in my mind whenever people mention primary school, along with the Chinese teacher (when I was ten) who couldn't pronounce my given name and called me by my surname for a whole year. And the trauma of buying doughnuts from the school canteen for the first time when I couldn't produce the exact change. And the kleptomaniac who stole a total of nearly RM300 from me over a period of two or three weeks: the money was supposed to be for buying schoolbooks and paying tuition fees (in those days, the schools gave after-school, non-free tuition). And the time the teacher got so irritated by my inability to remember the books to bring on each day that she emptied out my entire schoolbag in front of the class, and I had to pick up the books after she delivered an entire discourse on the ills of forgetfulness. And there are many more equally bleak memories of my primary school days--in fact I don't think I have a single happy memory of my primary school days. Not until standard 5 and 6, when I met Chronicles and he became the first-ever best friend I ever had... and then, of course, we drifted apart in the years that followed.
Lest you now think I had, or have, a very bitter and sad life, I should probably add that it was probably mostly my fault somehow or other. I've never been exactly the life of the party--more the death of it, I should say. Old and sour, I must admit the tone is. But in the end, it all boils down to that I fear people very much. Meet somebody new, my first reaction is to try to be nice so they don't have any motivation to hurt me. Even with the Brats--I never wanted to have to hurt them. The first time I met somebody off a forum, I took along a 15cm knife in my backpack, just in case they weren't as friendly in real life as they were on MSN. (The meeting never happened since the times had been badly coordinated, fortunately for the other person.) Of course this fear disappears after awhile: but when it comes to strangers, I'm still wary. You never know, after all.
And as for God... well, I stand in awe of Him, of course. It's not like I can do otherwise. Not after studying His works for the entire past semester, not after seeing the stars up at Mt. Killer, not after seeing the people around me. But when it comes to being asked to change--yes, I know it's all for the best; yes, I know it's absolutely necessary; yes, I know if I don't change for the better I'll change for the worse. But I keep wishing I didn't have to be conscious during the process of change. In fact I'd rather think of myself as a patient and God as a surgeon--where I can just fall into an anaesthetised sleep and wake up perfectly fine; not the alternative, where I'm a house and God's the renovator: because even if the renovator knows where to knock down first so that the house doesn't quite come crumbling down, there's no way for the house to be anaethetised throughout the whole thing... and what's more, renovation is a far longer and more difficult process than surgery.
Of course the end result is also a lot more permanent and visible. But still...
Isn't there a song somewhere? Something about though one doesn't understand what's coming ahead, the eyes of faith still see that God is good... well, I've still got a long way to go before I get to that stage, very evidently. Because right now, all I see is the great coming unknown and behind that, perhaps one day I'll see God at work behind the circumstances and I'll thank Him for them. But I still see the circumstances first.
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