...i'm dreaming out loud...

.sunset.

Anyer Beach, 2007

Okay. So now it's official.
WELCOME TO MY NEW AND IMPROVED PAGE!
*jumps around in excitement*

I hope you guys like the new layout. Or at least promise me you will try to learn to like it? Well, after all, it's been what, two years since this blog last changed its layout? So, yeah there you go. It's always good to have changes happening every once in a while.
Right? *grins*

Alright. All reintroductions aside...
Update: Life hasn't been treating me good lately.

I know, maybe I complain too much.
Reality bites. HARD. Sometimes I'm so awfully tired I just feel like I wanna disappear. Like, as if tons of assignments and assessment tasks are not burdensome enough for a second-year uni student to handle. Emotional turmoil, much?
Thank GOD I managed to get by, and didn't succumb into like an emotional breakdown or something. Now that would've been bad. *sighs*

But now I'm okay. I think. Stable at the very least.
After a relaxing Friday night and a lazy-ass Saturday morning *YAY!*, I'm recharged and ready to face another period of hard work. And I'm surely gonna need all the strength that I can get to go through another hectic week. Remind me to do a sanity check, like, every three hours or so. Just to make sure I'm still here, mental health and all. *raises eyebrows*

Anyway.

A couple of days ago, I was talking to an old friend, now residing in Sydney, on the phone about life, and changes, and our pursuits of freedom. This was when I was so crapped up and stressed out that going to sleep was even hard to do, then thanks to 3 Mobile free minutes, I decided to give this amazing person a ring, and yes she wasn't asleep at 2 in the morning so we ended up talking.

Somewhere during the almost-one-hour-long conversation, she once again reminded me that for us, the concept of total freedom is insane.
Well, go figure.

Growing up Asian in a conservative family within a conservative country with contradicting beliefs and values, I've been forced to believe that humans exist as a collective, with limited free will and freedom of choice. I am obliged to always get back to family in everything that I do. What I do, what I think, what I say, and what I believe in, everything has to always pass through some kind of family censorship.
Like, I can NEVER do something freely, without having a family member find out about it and report it back to the rest of the crowd. Free will is obsolete, and don't even get me started on complaining about freedom of choice. They're totally out of the picture.

Sometimes I can't help but think that this is unfair.
After all, I am an individual. A single human being. A separate entity, with my own values and beliefs and preferences and interests. Ideally, I'm free to choose. I'm free to live my life the way I want to. So why is it that I have to always conform to those stupid standards set by family, most of which I don't agree with?

Come on, JJ, do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that. Do this, 'cuz it's good for you. Do this, 'cuz Mommy tells you to. Don't do this, 'cuz it's not appropriate. Don't do that, 'cuz if you do that and get caught, your family will be disgraced.
Well I don't effin' care, so shut it.

And it's not that I don't love my family. I do love them dearly, and I care about them.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that I have to always be in line with their decisions. Does it?
I mean, I wanna have a life of my own, thank you very much. Let me learn how to survive with my own style, in my own ways, according to my own values and beliefs. After all, I'm not a toy, or a doll. I have my own prerogative. There's gotta be a time when you really let me go and allow me to really stand up on my own two feet. I appreciate what you guys have done for me so far, but yeah, I really wanna be free.

I know probably I'm taking this whole concept of freedom a little too seriously.
But just imagine living inside a social and cultural cage your whole effin' life and being continuously told what to do all the time by they very people who claim they love you. You couldn't have a say, let alone decide on what you were gonna do with your life. Even after you managed to get away a little and start over in a different country, they always want to chase you back, not letting go. Everytime you feel that you've finally one step closer to freedom, they always come around to remind you that they won't ever let go.

Their best argument? This is all for your own good. You won't see it now, but eventually you'll understand, when you grow up later in life.
Whatever that means.

So, yeah. Being Asian is tough.
If you're not careful, you'll lose yourself and be just another member of the brainwashed collective. And I'm sick of being uniform. Sick of seeing everybody else turn to hollow cases of reinforced values and beliefs, with no free will whatsoever.

I wanna break out, I don't wanna be like them.
Yet I know it's nearly impossible for me to do.
Outcast, much?

I envy Western people. I really do.
I hate the fact that they've got a LOT of freedom in their hands and I barely have any in mine. I hate the fact that they can choose to liberate themselves from the constraints of family boundaries and get no consequences for doing that, while if I even dare to try to do that, my family will think I'm disowning them, and that's not good.

*sighs*
Oh well.

Growing up is painful as it is necessary.
And yes, you cannot be a single white rose amongst thousands of red, thorny ones. You'll eventually end up conforming, or adapting, or dying, if you're not hardy enough for Nature to consider as worthy of survival.

The question now is, am I ready to be different, above it all?
Are you?


...Have a nice weekend, peeps. =]