We're at the open air market, the one near Elektra House, sipping white ladies and tired from Judo. It's as good a day as I can make it - I wake up at 6 for work, spend a whole day at the UiTM labs, and then I head home for a short rest before going to the dojo. Two full days like that and I'm already happier.
Right now, however, I'm at the tail-end of a long 24 hours, sitting at one of those hard-topped plastic tables you can only find in old Kuching. These are speared to the ground on rusted metal rods and surrounded by similarly circular chairs, like a mummy mushroom with her children. Malcolm and Tim are with me. We're sweaty and high on endorphins.
"Where you want to go after this?" I ask Tim. It's a question we toss around a lot these days, before warmups or after stretching, all casual-like.
"Biomedical science." Tim speaks in Mandarin. He dips his spoon back into his cup, extracts a chunk of milky ice, and takes the time to swallow before continuing: "I'm taking IELTS now. If I do well I'm planning to go UK."
I know nobody who's gone to the UK. Of the top five students in my form 5 class, I know of only one - Aidan - who's currently in France. And even that's a whole channel away from England. And biomedicine? Wow. I look at my hands and consider the difficulty involved in any bio-related subject. I never did do well in Bio. Couldn't for the life of me figure out why I needed to study mitochondria and platelete structure, especially when I wouldn't - couldn't (I cannot stand the sight of blood) - end up a doctor.
When I return from my thoughts Tim and Malcolm are talking about our drinks. "You know," Malcolm says, "You remind me of Sensei."
I turn towards him. Huh?
"He had never drank a White Lady before. Not until Clifford brought him out for a drink. He was like ... -" here Malcolm makes a mime of putting down a glass after a first sip "- 'what drink is this?' and then he asked for a lemon and then he put the lemon on his cup edge and he turned it all around and he drink finish. Wow mans he loved white lady."
We smile at the memory of Sensei. I wonder what he's doing over in Penang, and whether he thinks of us the way we think of him. But that's maudlin territory, not to be touched, so I blink the thought away and ask: "Where's Clifford now ah?"
"Plymouth." Malcolm replies. "Coastal engineering."
"On scholarship?"
"Yeah. Kinda -"
"What kind?"
"INTI."
I raise an eyebrow at that. I now know somebody who's in the UK.
"You le?" Tim asks, looking at me.
I hold a breath. "If my results aren't good, probably local U. Don't want to overburden my parents."
"How're you so sure you're not going to get good results?"
I stir the ice in my white lady. "Left about 40% blank in my math paper." I say, quietly. "And I don't want to think about the rest. What does that tell you?"
What I don't tell them is that the nightmares are back.
"So what? As long as you pass -"
"If it isn't an A, it isn't a pass."
"You can't be serious ..."
"True la." Malcolm cuts in, "For them, a B is a fail." I do not question what 'they' meant.
But then Malcolm turns to me, and the thought spills out: "Sometimes, when I see Joash, or Clifford, or you, I get jealous. Things come easy for you people. Look at Joash, man. He's now at NUS, doing business. Or Horng Eng. You know, she's like me - she's taking Civil Engineering. And you know what she got in her first sem? 4.0, mans! And Clif-"
"What about me?" I ask, and I narrow my eyes. "I mean, you got all that from just seeing me in Judo?" And this is strange - Malcolm has never seen me negotiate, has never seen me lead, has never seen me teach. The thought that he can see the other side of me - the side my friends call intimidating - is a scary one.
"From what Lee Hwa says -" (Lee Hwa is the current president of St Thomas's Judo club) "- you're the kind of person who ... does things. Who says, 'okay let's do it'. You know? You want something, and you go towards it. It's like you work hard, but not that kind of hard. You're ... committed."
But my lips twitch upwards into a smile, because for a bubble of a second I see Kenny's face, and it's Form 4 again and I'm telling him that I'm washing my hands of the Maxis CyberlinQ project and he's telling me that I'm not committed enough to the team and I should buck up and see reason or get out, and out for good. And he's right. But I hadn't seen it yet, hadn't completely given in to the Thomian culture of giving yourself wholely to a cause greater than the sum of its parts ...
"I wasn't always like that." I mutter.
And I see now. I do. I call it drive. The need to prove yourself, the need to reach for higher and greater things, to do things other people wouldn't think of doing, just for the heck of it. Reaching so hard that your fingers brush the fruit of perfection, the blades of sunlight in your face. And never settling when you win, never too depressed when you lose. And a corollary: never really happy; never really sad. The cost of drive is ambivalence, a half-life that never swings too far up or down. And I'm just 19. I was driven, but maybe in the wrong areas. I don't know. When I'm old and I look back, would it be good? Would it all have been worth it, being driven like that, at the expense of unfiltered joy, and bleak dispair?
[Update]: I've gotten rid of the bloody arrogant ending, and that teaches me a lesson for writing at 3 am. The truth is: I'm not sure whether drive is a good thing. We've all seen overachievers in action, and I'm sure we all know one or two in person. Over the past 2 years, in Form 6, I've had a taste of how it feels like, being one ... and I'm not sure if that's how I want to live my life. Dickens had drive in abundance (wrote a series of classics, edited a magazine, had 10 children, set up a house for wayward women, lectured, fought for wider adoption of copyright law - you have to wonder if he ever really slept ...) So did Trump, and Jobs, and Chanel. But look at the flip side of the coin: Einstein lived a bummer life (and a great one!) and he got far; Hubble practically had everything handed to him on a silver platter, and he got far too. (History remembers him for his contribution to astronomy; what they don't mention is that every academic and career decision he made turned out to be the best possible thing he could ever do.)
Would I want to live the rest of my life in ambivalence? The self-help books call drive 'positive energy', which I think is mostly a load of badly written money-guzzling metaphysical rubbish. Drive is best learnt from the sweat and dirt of sport, or under the iron tenacity of a mentor, a coach (or in my case, a sensei). Is drive the best way to live a life? I know that this sounds weird, asking these questions here. But my writing is an extension of my mind, and drive is something I've been thinking about a lot these couple of months. I'm adrift for the moment - driveless, if you will. What will my plans for 2009 be?
The answer is that I'm not sure. But I'll tell you when I find out.
13 comments:
You were typing this for Six Hours?!
I am not trying to start the whole argument on mediocrity again here. But definitions aside, without your drive you'd have stayed at mediocre. And I don't think you'd ever settle for mediocre.
Drive and maybe a bit of inspiration certainly will not hurt as much as it will occupy your time with something you might deem as meaningful.
u think highly of urself. Too highly.
u write with a pride i don like
the ugly truth: I hate it when people have drive and I don't. And when I do, I hate it too, cos I feel that after a stack of effort, there really isn't much difference done and I feel so underachieved.
I hate it when other people can somehow put random English words together which can mesmerize people and for some weird reason choose them for elite universities. Especially when that auntie's daughter who got into Oxford while you're stuck in a normal mediocre university which any dumbo can get into.
People call it jealousy but for my comfort I'd rather call it human nature.
if it's drive that got them there, I want a bit of it. Either I got the wrong 'drive' or I ain't got it?
It's frustrating, yes - to try so hard for something and nothing different is happening, whilst other people just seem to get everything.
The worst part is, if you just happen to fluke it and do well in a something something, you got that expectation there that you have to perform just as well or even better.
I'm sorry. Went off on a more or less unrelated rant there.
But yeah. People look up to you. Enjoy it while you can.
I'd like to believe that all humans are equal and no such thing as status quo exists but I tend to find myself scoffing at the idea when I think about it.
It's times like these when I wish I had Down Syndrome. Things will be so much more simpler.
But then again, that'd be making me sound like I'm ungrateful for my life. I guess when you try so hard that you can't try anymore and nothing happens, all you can do is let go, and let God take the reins.
You'll find your drive somewhere. It's probably just under your bed or something.
@Sam: I hope your essay ended off with a fantastic climax - and can I please please take a look? =3 PS: it's not so much as inspiration as it is motivation. Inspiration is creative ... arts based. Motivation is ... (how do I put this?) driven.
Ehheh forgive the pun.
@Anon: In cases like these I usually let the readership of my blog, the people who know me, step in to correct you. But I'll say two things now:
1, I am proud. I am proud of what I've done, and I'm proud of how I did it. I think I did good things, and it's especially sweeter now that I know I started things and fought for things and helped other people in a positive way. There's no better way, IMHO, to live my life.
2, You may be right that I think too highly of myself. Ending was arrogant, after all. But rest-assured that self-consciousness comes as part of the package.
@Anne Omines: I have to say now that I look forward to your comments. Your words carry wisdom and are always, always thought provoking. Thank you for taking the time to write me such a long comment.
On your 'unrelated' rant: I don't think it's unrelated at all. I think it's just a fact of life that some people are gifted more than others, through no fault or making of their own. There is a play called Amadeus, about a man who hated Mozart so much because God gave him limitless talent, while he - a driven individual - cannot possibly write great scores and beautiful music to celebrate God.
Which is, when you think about it, very sad.
I think you're right. It's the trying that matters, not the achieving. If you've tried your hardest, and grappled with greatness, and you still fall short of the fruit of perfection, at least you can fall back down to earth with the satisfaction that the blades of sunlight were in your face, if only for a moment.
And that is something I think I can live with.
When I first entered university, I was a person who liked to question and ask tonnes of questions during lectures. That wasn't something a student in my university would do. I asked my senior if that was appropriate; to question a lecturer's stand. My senior said...it's like committing suicide, because you are putting your grade at risk. Instantly I stopped doing that, seeing that it's the most suitable way to stay "normal" like the other university students.
Then one day, I came across another lecturer during a university function, I talked to him about my senior's advice, and he gave me his idea.
"Your senior is telling you to do that because she's afraid that you'll be better than her. Asking questions in class is an essential learning process. If you ask in a polite way, then I don't see there's any problem. She's doing that to you because she doesn't want you to learn more than her. Be confident with yourself, live life with passion. That's what drives us in life, isn't it?" the lecturer said to me with such confidence.
Today, I came across a quote in the newspaper,' you are only useless when you think you're useless."
If you ask me, I would say that there's nothing wrong showing your confidence and drive to do things to other people, because it simply means that you're true to yourself. I have tried to hide myself up for a couple of months, but it was just painful; you want to do things, be different, but you need to trash that thought just because you want to fit into the norm like everyone else.
This reminds me of the following phrases from Rudyard Kipling's 'If',
"If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch."
I have confidence, I play Judo seriously, I argue with people without hesitation, I complete tasks passionately and as perfect as possible, but I'm also a best friend to many friends and a responsible example to many people, be it my juniors, family or even the society.
I say 'thank you' to people who hate me for who I am, because it shows that I'm truly different. =) If I can be accepted by my family, my friends and my society for who I am and how I think, who cares about a couple of foes, right?
Again, Rudyard Kipling said that,
"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:"
Don't worry Ced, you will be the man!
Thank you. It's something of a relief to know that I'm not weird to be struggling with things like this.
But lately I've been wondering about Kipling. He said that we should, ideally, treat success and failure as the same. And isn't that ambivalence?
I'm starting to think that poem is more powerful than I first realized. It grows on you. And it changes, everytime you reread it.
Thanks for the story, again - like I told you ... very motivational speechy. B-)
You can live with it, I, on the other hand might have a lil trouble with that. ^^''
Wait a minnit. Howdya say biomedical science in chinese anyway?? o.O
lol. I was wondering about that too...Biomedical science in Mandarin. 生物医学？
He said it in English. ;-) I would totally go HUH if it were in Mandarin.
I'm still thinking about it, Anne, but I think success is a result of too many factors. So it'll be too simplistic to just say drive and hard work is all that matters. There's luck, after all, and personality and genes and socio-economic status and family and environment.
We can't say for certain that we'll be successful and famous in the future. But we can say that as long as we tried, and we were proud of trying hard, we can die knowing we lived a life worth living.
@Zhe Rong: WHAT WAS THAT?!
I have no drive to comment.
OK lame joke.
why? why? Why all the comment so long? why? why?
Put that arrogant ending back. Let's take things as they are. Is that a prerogative granted only to anon? Or are you gonna help me flame you?
The great winners seldom look back and strut while being just 10 metres into the race. I won't say that you're wrong to be proud of some of your stuff, but I think it's a little premature.
It could be something else. The truly confident seldom see the need to flaunt, but you seem to be unconsciously developing this defense mechanism to counteract uncertainty. Though world champions do that to get over mental barriers, anyhow. But not too often. You're not getting the validation you think you deserve in some areas I guess.
Which is why anon, we may well be seeing Cedric unknowingly try to fix a confidence problem he has. Which is very funny.
Yet I do see some arrogance. That would end up being an even longer comment of which I'd rather tell you in person - but the gist of it is this - when a king opens his eyes a king sees subjects.
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