Childhood Home- lifelong setting

The setting of my dreams is mostly at my home in KL where I lived for 10 years from the age of 5 to 15. I have thereafter also stayed in 3 separate homes in Singapore for about 10 years each, but my dreams rarely occurred at these later homes. Thus I feel early childhood experiences, especially at the age when our world was ruled by 'big people' have lasting impact in our subconscious mind. What is often important in dream interpretation is to identify the feeling, ie. how one feels during the dream or immediately upon waking up. Usually a recent event/situation may have evoked feelings which we associate with similar feelings encountered during our childhood at home.

Watching the children in the children's home where I volunteered makes me wonder how the experience of living in an institution away from home will impact them. When I observe the sand stories played out by the children at sandplay therapy sessions, some common themes surface. Amongst my collection of symbols, a castle and a stone cottage are often picked and featured in the sand stories, most likely reflecting a longing for a real home. Some of these children do not even have a permanent place outside which they can call home. One child instead of picking a cottage, built a wall using the sand and placed pieces of furniture to demarcate a home; but only to crumble the wall and bury the furniture, the futility of it all.

Although for some of us, our childhood home may not necessary be a symbol of love and security, it nevertheless was THE  place to go back to at the end of each day.

Will these children be deprived even of a permanent setting for their life long dreams; I wonder.

Rant of a silver hair ageist

Read about this "Silver Co-op", a social entreprise, that organizes group vacations for people over 40 with itineraries that cater to the needs of silver hair citizens including visiting places less energy demanding, providing food less oily and salty and including more TOILET BRAKES (which incidentally my husband would appreciate :) )

Honestly I am not sure whether I would like to travel with them. Though I am not athletic by nature I would really prefer to travel with a younger group and see whether I can stretch myself further. I recall myself and my husband joining a middle aged Australian hiker-couple going on a highland trek at Lombok. Though my feet went shaky at the relatively rough terrain and was fearful of slipping and falling, I had no choice but to keep up with the group, with my husband literally pulling me up at times.Oh Boy what I would have missed if I had chickened out.

There is another aspect one has to tolerate when moving with an elderly group. The common one-mindedness trait can be a test on one's patience. Gosh don't I sound like one silver haired ageist bitch!

I have many such encounters when talking to supposedly more enlightened elderly investors at company AGMs during receptions. One particular old man grilled me as to why I queried the company on its zero gearing during question time. "Why do you want the company to be in debt?" he charged whilst I tried to explain to him the concept of optimal WACC (weighted average cost of capital). I patiently tried to parallel it with an example of how we geared up for personal investment in property, but he was too fixed in the mind about the risk/evil of being in debt to really take in anything I said. I gave up and terminated our conversation with a sigh and "never mind".

Reading about this co-operative got me into thinking what we the silver-hair people really need. We need some patient and sacrificial young volunteers to organize discussion groups amongst elderly people banded by age and education. The golden rule to abide at such discussion sessions is to have an open mind. So let's say with a ratio of 10 seniors to 2 or 3 youngsters, a topic can be put forward for discussion or an article to be read before hand. But mind you I am not referring to feed back groups on government policies organised by government (yawn). I am referring to random topics which can be something in the news or certain social behaviour or even out of nowhere topics like how much sleep do we need?", topics along the lines of questions posted in Quora perhap.

I myself am fortunate or unfortunate enough  to have children who often unceremoniously remind me of my narrow outlook and out-datedness in knowledge. So I receive regular links to read or ignore (irrespective) in their attempt to keep me abreast of how the young think and do.  I can't say I am pleased to be told such but if I swallow my pride and explore more it does change my outlook. I also must say sometimes I choose to ignore and tell myself it is too exhausting to make sense of this fast changing world, "who cares" and "so be it" and "I like being the sleepy frog in the well".

However if we do take some time to reflect upon our own experiences, how we were often proven wrong from initial impressions or fixed ideas or stubborn blindness, we may start taking small steps to open up.

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.” -Isaac Asimov


Next time I will say to some old man "give your mind a scrub"and if he retorts with remarks that imply “我吃的盐比你吃的米多” I will sigh and say "never mind" and scrub mine instead.

A Confluence of Factors

When you watch a bunch of sticks burning have you wondered who the fire's parents are? The sticks and the matches probably because they created the fire. How about the wind that flamed the fire or the person who started the fire? If the fire spread to nearby vegetation causing a forest fire who bears the blame? How about the arid condition of the forest itself?

Watching the video clip of the tragic ferry disaster in South Korea is quite heart wrenching, especially how the students could have been saved had the situation been managed differently. Another needless tragedy was the suicide of the vice principal of the school who felt responsible for the death of the high school students for he had pushed for the field trip to Jeju and was saved from the ferry. Upon further reflection various factors have been discussed, one being the Korean culture of respect for elders and authority. It has been wondered had the students been a bunch of American kids would they have ignored the instruction to stay in their cabins. I think it is not just about obedience but of respecting that the authorities would know what is best for the good of everyone, in this case an orderly evacuation. The video clip showing the captain climbing out onto a rescue boat before his crew and other passengers has drawn public anger but also explanatory comments that it is common for Koreans to let their elders and higher ranked colleagues priority when evacuating in a dangerous situation. In the light of comments about how the Korean culture has partly to be blamed for the disaster, parents who lost their children may even blame themselves for instilling strict unflinching obedience in their children.

Alas this blaming game will certainly bring about immense pain and guilt. If the vice principal could see that his approval/pushing for the trip was just one condition out of many many factors that contributed to the disaster he might feel less afflicted. Like the metaphor of the fire that I described above, he alone could not have brought about the disaster, so many conditions happened together gave rise to it like in a confluence of rare factors that causes a perfect storm.

In fact even in our everyday life we are so inclined to blaming and often suffer from being blamed. The most toxic habit is of course blaming oneself endlessly. I think we will have more peace if we remember that in any one event so many factors often beyond one's control or even in one's knowledge are at play.

Even if we are the match that strikes and builds the fire, we certainly have no intention nor power to singularly cause a forest fire.