I think my favourite U course is the Shakespeare course that I took in my penultimate semester. Ha, not a law course!
Anyway, there's a speech from Macbeth that I really like. It's on the surface a very dark and sad quote. But if you go deeper you notice there's a lot of guidance you can derive from it.

Macbeth:
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Because Macbeth says this when he's lost everything except his own life, the speech is taken to signify his immense regret at the way he's lived his life. It's a realization that he's strayed so far away from his honour and his original ideals. So yes, please stick to your ideals, i.e. what makes you, you. 

And the "sound and fury that signifies nothing": I think it's trying to say that emotional temperance is the way to go. Extremes-- greed, depression, lust, ambition, etc. are all intense emotions but what belies them is actually a sort of hollowness. These emotions are built on false premises. 

Sometimes it's hard to find that sort of golden mean of your emotions, i.e. that state of mind that allows you to achieve that emotional temperance. Humans are humans, at many points they do experience those intense emotions. But I think that emotional temperance is a coming-of-age process. People may come of age at different stages of their life, but first there is the teenagehood to adulthood transition, i.e. the 20s. 

And Macbeth lost his temperance, because of his foolish ambition, so he ended up like he did. i.e. dead and depressed. He only realized at the end that he had built his life on false premises and it was all tumbling around him at that point.

So I think, life is to be lived moderately. It's not always rarh-rarh. It does not always progress in a straight line, it could eddy about in circles, it could bring you back to square 1. You don't have to overreach yourself to attain some highfalutin lofty goal. 

The meaning of life, if any, is not apparent to us. E.g. Steve Jobs, in a commencement speech I think, mentioned that his life didn't make sense when he was younger, but when he grew older he realized that all the dots were connected and they brought him to where he was that day. So it's only at a certain very mature age that you realize that hey, I can kinda spot some meaning in my life, if I look at it in a particular way. And that can only come with accumulation of life experience and the passing of time. And lots of alcohol. 

So when you're young, like I am, don't try to find any meaning in life. You'll go nuts. Just. Live. It. If I could draw an analogy, what I mean is, remember that teambuilding game where you're blindfolded and you have to go through an obstacle course, relying on nothing but your sense of touch and your team's instructions? Like, go left! crawl! step over this! I think life should be lived like that. The instructions, well, they come from your brain and heart. And the blindfold represents that hurdle between yourself and eventual comprehension. 

Feels like I've digressed. But yeah, my point is, don't stray from yourself, don't try to find meaning in your life, and enjoy the ride. 

Okay. Just saying all this because I've thought of this speech frequently enough to have to write about it now. It's a very beautiful speech. 

Signing off as--

a bored millennial who has time to bum around

I just watched a video starring Idris Elba. It's an advert. Anyway, he asks old people and middle-aged people, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And their responses are funny-- they burst out laughing or they stare at him goggle-eyed.
And he says, smugly, you realize you haven't stopped growing, right?
And they're like, ooooooooooooh yeah... Somebody explained that, when you get to a certain age, you think that if you haven't done something, it's unlikely that you'll be able to do it the rest of your life, because real life.

I like it. It's inspirational. In a way, it's very typical of the millennial generation who don't have typical material goals that their parents had. Millennials find it hard to grow up-- I read it in an article somewhere. Millennials don't believe in holding down a job for 40 years to support their family. Well, a few do have such a dream. But I don't. I can't bring myself to be committed to a career for the next decade, much less 40 years. Maybe not even 5 years. 2 years sounds like a more realistic goal for me.

1. I'm not desperately trying to start a family. Falling in love is the first step, and that already sounds like a fantasy to me. Anyway, I don't need a steady cash flow for that. I mean, falling in love... I just think it's hard to imagine another love that could be as unconditional as the family love I currently enjoy.
(Perhaps I'm being very idealistic. After all, a lot of people do have this notion of a transactional type of love, without even knowing it themselves. On the extreme end of the spectrum is the marriage of convenience, so a transactional love is something like that, but to a lesser degree.)

2. I'm all for building a life, for myself, that has meaning. We know that the Singaporean 5Cs dream became outdated a long time ago. (Or do we?) I'm fine as I am without them.
So if this career doesn't work out, I'd see it as an adventure for me to venture in another direction. Something that has less prestige is fine. How could you measure your life with prestige? I can't. It could be a job in a publishing house.
And if Idris Elba were to ask me that question, I think I'd say I want to experience much more of the world-- in terms of geography, in terms of human nature, in terms of culture. I don't know how I can achieve that. But it's good to keep it in mind as an indicator of sorts. It sounds very vague, idealistic, hipsterish, selfish, and vain, and more realistic people would be rolling their eyes if I told them this. Well go ahead, your eyes are yours to roll.
I mean it's to each his own. I personally observe that people with material wealth aren't necessarily happy. And yeah, money can't buy you happiness but you can't be happy without money, yeah I know that as well. But you don't have to be a millionaire to be happy right?

Imagine somebody tells you something mind-shattering
And you realise that you've been living life wrong
#life
#breakoutofyourmind
#cantconcentrateonrevision

I'm totally against preaching my worldview. So I'm writing this to myself, as a mental note.
The trouble with doing things primarily for the money you earn or the prestige that comes with it is that your life becomes rather empty after a while. Say several years, a decade, or more, but it will feel empty eventually.
Everyone knows that the standard of living here can be high. (keywords: can be) Many feel the desire to earn more so that they come across as more successful, more reliable, etc. But to use that as the main justification for the way you live your life... it sounds convincing at first, but when you think about it again, you may start to feel a kind of hardness forming in your heart. That is the feeling you get from squeezing all your life's goals, childhood dreams, unfulfilled desires, into one narrow path called the career ladder.
If you've got a bread-and-butter job, count yourself lucky. Lead a simple life and don't pretend to be rich by hankering after great food, great holidays, and so on. Most of the older generation i.e. our parents and grandparents understood this.
Everyone sees life through different lenses. I've just presented life through my lens. Pick a lens that suits your worldview the most and be contented.

We always have choices.
We just need to open our mind to it.
^_^

The curation of the Suits' soundtracks is a masterpiece. I especially like Season 3's soundtracks, and some of Season 2's. Season 3's soundtracks really tugged at heartstrings and made me wanna melt into a puddle of feels. 

Enough gushing. Here's my current favourite.

The intro is vaguely reminiscent of an evil ritual, something that could be appropriate in a Macbeth movie. And then bam, it moves into a soulful classy guitar riff. It was playing for a pivotal Litt scene in Season 3. 

The song reminds me of how trying to do good in an apathetic and amoral environment can be futile. The (tragic) hero is trying to do some good but he's short-changed because he sacrifices some integral part of himself to the devil, or perhaps the outcome isn't as good as he wants to be because it's thwarted by somebody evil. 

And with that in mind, here's some thoughts on the elections halfway across the world.

I think apathy is gripping the nation. It is difficult to grasp Trump's stance on certain moral issues because he only says things to please. The fact that he's gaining so much momentum shows that a significant part of the electorate doesn't really care about what's right and wrong. One thing that is constant is that he wants to, vaguely, rebuild the economy and make America great again. It is a slim promise but he sells it well enough. It shows that some are willing to cling on to a promise of wealth regardless of the candidate's moral compass. 

Democracy works best if the electorate has a strong moral compass. Right now it is messed up. Too much absolutism, too little consideration for the broader values that they should want their presidency to stand for.

Mike Ross yells in Season 2, "There's such a thing as right and wrong!"

Those are golden words. 

Some advice to young students today (but really, it is just advice for myself because I'm only writing it here)
But I also think it is very relevant to students today, because everyone's shouting about creativity and liberalization. Yet for some reason I don't really care if people read this. I have opinions but I don't really care about whether anyone appreciates it.



I love this song. So glad I discovered it.
It reminds me of the time I was a teenager, when all I loved to think of was how school was too regimented for my liking, and too boring. Sure it was intellectually stimulating, but in the end it was all the same because all you really had to do was to be book smart and exam smart. I remember very well all my angst about this, because I was too scared to drop out of school. Because I was the same as everyone else, I wanted to succeed and I didn't think I could succeed on my own without school, because I didn't think I could be a college dropout genius. It does take a tremendous amount of creativity to do that, and honestly I've never had much creativity. Haha. So I sensed we were all being squeezed into little boxes but I didn't know any way around it.

I must sound like an ungrateful Gen Y entitled kid but hold on.

I've emerged quite unscathed from schooling. Maybe I'm understating it: I've benefited from it. It may not be perfect but it is still probably the best way to educate masses of people. There is an age-old bond between society and order. Society can't thrive without order: just look back in history. So it is probably natural that we should learn this order from young. That said, I admire people who make the decision to home-school (just make sure you don't screw the kid up); it's very risky, but I think it can be very rewarding.

Just remember that what they teach in school isn't everything. It may be futile to force your individual, subjective, wildly different ideals on the schooling system, because what one student wants from the schooling system, isn't the same as what another student would want. Everyone (everyone who has the guts to think honestly and sincerely) will have different ideals. It's impractical to say, force schools to have mandatory meditation lessons, painting lessons, etc. So take non-schooling time to think about what you really want from life, what you really want to learn more about, who you really want to be. I think it's really important to know what you stand for.

I would also add that this individual quest would be, well, an individual one. You can't expect your teachers to give it to you, because everyone would think differently. If everyone thought the same, they'd just be sad little boxes that are all the same. So yes, I've realized that I should not have been blaming the system for anything. The real solution would be to look in the mirror and ask myself those same questions. And ask yourself if you agree with what you're learning in school.

One problem is, sometimes you feel too burnt out by the sheer amount of work to even care about these questions. I certainly felt like that. As for that the only solution would be to know your limits; push those limits, but always come back to yourself after that.