Mask Off And Be Yourself

Dream is defined as a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep. It is a state of mind marked by abstraction or release from reality. Everyone in  the Earth dream before. No matter you are young or old, aware or unaware, it is a natural phenomenon. We spend one third of our life, the same amount of time dedicated toward our career, exploring existence in a topsy-turvy world of dreams and symbols. As if we have entered a world of mirror, all that we encounter becomes a reflection of us. When we are facing crisis, dreams reveal the way ahead, activating self-knowledge and direction in life.

Maybe most of the people think that dream is not important or just an extra element in our life, but for me actually it might be our subconscious mind is trying to tell us something. Our inner-self is trying to talk and communicate with us. They live in our body. Or maybe, we are not even the host for this flesh but them.

By asking ourselves, "who is the real one in our body? Is it your subconscious mind or you yourself?" If I have to choose from this two, I guess my subconscious mind or inner-self might know me myself even better. In the real life, I am just someone who is wearing a mask known as Persona. I am nobody but someone who hides himself behind the mask and changes my mask according to the situation that I met in my daily live. According to the famous Psychologist Carl Jung, it is a mask designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual. 

When I am wearing the mask, I have to conceal my true nature. So when is the time I am wearing my mask? Living in this complicated social world, I have to be a student in university, a good child at home, a good friend, a polite young man when talking to the elders and etc. I am sure that some of these are not my true nature but I am doing it every day which makes me think that this is me. Mainly is because of the socialization process, I need to follow what others are doing to be part of the society or else I will be treated like a heterogeneous. I am afraid of being a heterogeneous.

Due to the reason of wearing the mask every day, slowly I can't see and remember my face anymore. One day, I might have difficulty to recognize myself and question myself in front of a mirror, "who are you?" This question might be as tough as the popular research- “Chicken or the egg came first?” However, my inner-self is always able to be himself in dream. He does not afraid of anyone and anything. If he has to die in the dream, then he will just die. You might say that die in a dream does not mean that you do not scare of something because it is still a dream. How do you know that the one we are living is reality but not dream? It might be the inner-self is the true world and we are just mere some pathetic illusions in their world.

           

           In a nutshell, we always hear others talking about dare to be ourselves, get out from your comfort zone and to start going after your dream. Before you start chasing your dream, I would suggest you to take off your Mask of Persona and be yourself in front of anyone. I am not asking you to be bad or portrait all the negative sides of yourselves to people around you but to prevent yourself from suppressing your feelings. Positive and relaxing mood always ensure a better quality of life. We are supposed to be like our inner-self because we are not acting on a stage. Remember life is a gift by God, let’s spend it wisely without any regrets.  

Loss is Gain

A lot of people think that loss is a failure to keep or to continue to have something. It might also be the experience of having something taken from you or destroyed. In fact, most of us will feel sad and disappointed for the second occasion.

For the last piece of blog in CTIG class, I am going to write about my perception related to this topic.

I am a student now, and I need to sit for exam in every semester. Before the examination begins, everyone is given 14 weeks to learn, revise and prepare for the exam. This is to ensure everyone is starting from the same line and to see who is the fastest runner at the end of the day. So, I am the one who always stuck at the middle. I lost to the people who were always in front of me and won the people who were behind of me. 

I always think that how good would it be if the people who always got better results than me is not existed in my freaking world. Then, I would not loss my position in the class, my self-esteem, my EQ and etc. I felt angry, sad, disappointed when there is someone perform better than me. We were once on the same starting line but I lost at the finished line. How good can it be to me?

So what do those elders words mean to be then? Loss is gain? I loss my position and GPA right now, so what did I gain? 

I have come out a conclusion for this so call of proverb, I loss something in the process and others gained it from me. That's what happening in this world now and accept it because I am living in it. 

Help yourself

Recently, there is an open burning has been carried out around my housing area. It is done by an refuse collection center who has been irresponsibility to the environment. I strongly believe that the owner of the refuse collection center has the knowledge about the effect of open burning but why the owner still does it? 

Imagine if one day I am the leader of a government in a country, I will persuade my cabinet to support my idea  in allocating budget to the research department. Nothing much but this budget is to invent a chips and put a human body to remind them what is bad. This chips are not going to control you but just remind you by alarming you with the words " This is a bad idea". 

If you ignored the suggestion that the chip had sent to you, data will be send to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (NRE)。 Then, further law action will be taken by them to the offenders to make sure our mother Earth is protected. I have to emphasize that chance is given to the offenders when the chip reminded you once. No second nor third, because our mother Earth would not give us any chance anymore once she is gone. 

Kindly assumed yourself being someone who keep get stabbed by people you helped, sparing your life to them to live, but almost all of them are stabbing you again and again, will you give up on helping them before you die? or you'll be like our mother Earth, still doing what she can and gives us the best?

 

A device

Have you ever imagine when the Earth is totally polluted, and the natural resources that human needs are unable to be use anymore. Are we able to survive? Based on the technology that human possess now, sadly to say the answer is NO.

Most of the living things in the Earth need water to survive, especially human who relies on water so much. Human will die if we do not consume any water in 3 days. After 3 days, we will be perish. Are you willing to drink polluted water in the future? Maybe you can choose to die in 3 days or drink that polluted water and die slowly. 

Air allows us to carry out our respiration process. However, if the air now is polluted. Do you know that how many minutes can you survived without air? The answer is 3 minutes. Only 3 minutes.

Then is about the polluted food. Without food, human is able to live for only 3 weeks if water and air are provided. 

 

 And now, everyone know that pollution is bad to the environment and to the mother Earth but why we are keep carrying out the activities which bring a lot of negative impact to our planet. Personally, I feel that human is ignorant if they don't taste or experience something bad to themselves. When we don't see the impact, we are not afraid of it but once the consequences has shown up, we will be praying and begging for help when everything is too late and nothing can be done to save our Earth. 

 If there is a device that allows human to try the feeling of suffocate, to have a feeling of not drinking any water for 3 days and not eating any food for 7 days, will this phenomena change? 

If there is such a device, this technology must able to let human able to use their five senses when it connected to your brain. Then, the pulses that send out from the device able to stimulate our nerve cell and allows to taste the three situation that I have mentioned earlier just now. And to more extreme, the feeling of before being dead is able to be created.

Besides that, this device is use in education field to educate the youth the importance of natural resources and environment to us. Personally, I think that through education, awareness towards a certain issue will always be there. Therefore, to prevent human from destroying their home, this device must not has any side effects to the human body because it is about our life and future. 

But everything that our brain and body feel must be exactly 100% same as the situations of lacking of air, water and food when the device is connected. This is to warn the human for their ignorant and innocent. Once human has the 'real' experiences on such situation, then we will only appreciate and be grateful for what we are having now.

If you and I have the chance to try this device, I believe we will feel ashamed to ourselves because we are killing our mom with our own hands. I believe no one will not afraid of death if  they try the device. 

Dream, Inner-self and Me

  Dream is defined as a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep. It is a state of mind marked by abstraction or release from reality. Everyone in the Earth dream before. No matter you are young or old, aware or unaware, it is a natural phenomena. We spend one third of our life, the same amount of time dedicated toward our career, exploring existence in a topsy-turvy world of dreams and symbols. As if we have entered a world of mirror, all that we encounter becomes a reflection of us. When we are facing crisis, dreams reveal the way ahead, activating self-knowledge and direction in life.

  Maybe most of the people think that dream is not important or just an extra element in our life, but for me actually it might be our subconscious mind is trying to tell us something. Our inner-self is trying to talk and communicate with us. They live in our body. Or maybe, we are not even the host for this flesh but them.

  By asking ourselves, "who is the real one in our body? Is it your subconscious mind or you yourself?" If I have to choose from this two, I guess my subconscious mind or inner-self might be knowing me myself even better. In the real life, I am just someone who is wearing a mask known as Persona. I am nobody but someone who hide himself behind the mask and change my mask according to the situation that I met in my daily live. According to the famous Psychologist Carl Jung, it is a mask designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual. 

 When I am wearing the mask, I have to conceal my true nature. So when is the time I am wearing my mask? Living in this social world, I have to be a student in university, a good children at home, a good friend, a polite young man when talking to the elders and etc. I am sure that some of these are not my true nature but I am doing it everyday which make me think that this is me. Due to the reason of wearing the mask everyday, slowly I can't see and remember my face anymore. One day, I might not be able to recognize myself and question myself in front of a mirror, "who are you?"

  However, my inner-self always able to be himself in dream. He does not afraid of anyone and anything. If he has to die in the dream, then he will just die. You might say that die in a dream does not mean that you do not scare of something because it is still a dream. How do you know that the one we are living is reality but not dream? It might be the inner-self is the true world and we are just a mere pathetic illusions in their world. 

Unity

Unity is defined as a whole or totality as combining all its parts into one. Unity is an important value in forming a country, it is a necessary criteria to remain peace n calm. When there is certain number of people willing to be rule under a leader, those people are counted as united. A proverb had been created by philosopher long time ago which proven that 'Unity" is very important no matter last time or now, 'unity is strength'.

I guess everyone has a mouth ulcer before. Mouth ulcer is an ulcer that occurs on the mucous membrane of the oral cavity. In simple words, a mouth ulcer is a sore or open lesion in the mouth. Although a normal mouth ulcer does not cause any harm to our bodies, but it causes pain and discomfort to us. Even though just a small ulcer, but it able to spoil my days until it recovers.

Unity is not only meaningful to human, but to ulcers. If human unite together is to protect themselves, then ulcer is to produce more pain and discomfort to their host. When there are 2 or 3 ulcers combine together in your mouth, I guess everyone will curse hard to the ulcers even though they do not understand what are we talking. We are the host of ulcers, they are in our mouth because we did something wrong to our body so all these bastard come out and punish us. And when you choose to ignore warning from an ulcer, second ulcer will pop up and join with the first ulcer it they are near enough, just like the residents who stay together in a region, they always help each other.

In order to save yourself from them, you should break their unity before they joined up as bigger forces. Japan used to separate and to destroy the unity of  Malay, Chinese and Indian with their own economic strategy when they colonized Tanah Melayu. In order to deal with the ulcers, we should apply medicine on the ulcers before they get larger and joined with the others. Medicine is a medium that allows us to break the unity between the ulcers, to prevent our mouth conquered by them even though they will be gone after one or two weeks, because that short period of time is so suffering.

A short period of unity is able to create lot of troubles to us, at least I have to alter my choice of food. Sometimes, I do really hate unity.  

Haze

Once again, haze is back and is really killing me recently because of those hazy smell. Haze makes me unable to breathe well, keep coughing, sore throat feels uneasy and and it makes the weather becomes so hot. I have enough of all these so please haze, get away from my surrounding as soon as possible. I just want to enjoy my daily lives.

Haze is like any other negative or bad stuff happens around us, just that haze affects more people. Haze can be not just only haze, we can relate it to many more other things such as open burning , lack of rain, industrial pollution and others. But for me, I would like to relate haze to choices. 

In our daily lives, there are many negative and bad things surrounding us. For an example, a friend invites you to take drugs, to rob, to steal or even to kill someone. It is really depends on the individual whether we will get affected these 'haze' which directly affect our health or we choose to wear a mask and stay at home to take care of our healthy body. 

Every pollution happens for a reason. There must be someone who causes it and someone who suffered from it. It it a cyclic process, we might not see the effect immediately for what we did but someday somehow  when the effects show up, we will feel regret and sorry for what did. 

Just like what I had mentioned above, all these depends on the individual and the choices that we make will decide our future and destiny. Do not blame all these 'haze' if you are suffering from it, kindly has a rewind in your mind, did you do any similar things that contributed to 'haze' before? Who is the one that suffered from it? 

In a nutshell, if every individual is clean and fresh air, there will be no haze in this Earth. Not asking you to believe it, but to be better.   

Where is my soul ?

  During the previous lecture of creative thinking and idea generation, Mr. Lim asked us that did we question ourselves who we are before. This question had given me a thought of questioning myself now. This question is " Do I use my brain to question or to think everyday?". This might sounds stupid to others if I just go to someone and question him or her, "do you know who are you?" or "do you use your brain to think everyday?". If someone asked me before I attended the lecture class, I guess I will just laugh and walk off to ignore such meaningless question. But now, I feel it is actually legit.

  When I sit down quietly and think bout it, I don't really use my brain to think everyday. Everyday, I wake up and do the same thing all the times, I don't really have to use my brain to think because it is a habit. So, I feel that I'm just a robot who has a system set in my brain to run my daily lives. On weekdays, my daily routine is fixed. From the moment I wake up, every week and every weekday is the same. Study, using computers, driving, working, eating and sleeping. So, if I have to see myself as a subject other than human, I think I am a robot which I had mentioned earlier. Then, what's my brain is doing all the time?

  I am a flesh who does not often use my brain, I don't make choices everyday but everything is my habit even my meal selection is almost fixed. During primary school, I did what my parents wanted me to do which was to get a good results in UPSR. During secondary school, I was doing the same stuff too. Until today, I still do not know am I doing the things that the people surrounding me wanted me to do it, or my brain asked me to do so. I feel that sometimes people perception and comment affects my decision, and basically I ignored what my subconscious mind wants me to do. So, if let's say I always followed my habit, people's comments and perceptions to decide something, am I an individual who has a soul ? If I am able to ignore those people comments and perceptions at that time, am I still a flesh who does not has soul. I hope yes.

If Song Able To Heal

I like to listen to song, especially Chinese songs. I feel the words in Chinese song are able to touch my soul and talk to me through the air. Song is like a storyteller, they are the speaker for people who wrote or created songs, they help us to express our feeling in a different way, a way that we feel much more comfortable rather than having a face to face conversation. At least, sometimes this way works better than others. Sometimes when we listening to song, we might have the same story like what the song is telling. At that moment, we will feel that actually we are not the only one undergoes all these, we have friends who go through all these story lines too.

Well, if song is not only a storyteller, but also a doctor in the future and they are able to heal every single cell in our body once we hear the song that touches our soul. This will definitely brings a huge impact to our medical field and human does not need to consume pill or capsule to heal their illness. Song is able to treat or alleviate all sort of illness, even mental disease. Song also act as a stimulate which like vaccine, able to increase our antibody to fight any illness. But how are we going to know what kind of song is suitable for our illness? We are going to pick our the song according to different music genre, different genre has different medical effect. Once we pick up the correct music genre, our illness will be cure and healthy body will accompany us everywhere at anytime. However, when our body are too old, we would not be able to heal it with songs anymore. There is no reason has been proven why but we know that this technique is not perfect yet because deaf people does not get any benefits from this technique at all. 

Friend or Foe

Natural disaster is known as a phenomenon which will brings sadness, destruction, sorrow and fear. Disaster such as earthquake, eruption of volcano, tornado, and other disaster are natural phenomenon which cannot be avoided. We, human is still weak in front of mother of nature, they are able to crush us easily and brings despair to us.

However, there is nothing impossible in this universe. Imagine if one day, maybe after billions years, natural disaster is not an event which brings all those negative impacts to us, but are something benefits human. If a tornado able to send human to any place that you wish, place that even plane unable to reach because plane need a place to land. But tornado can just drop us off, all we have to do is just has the chance to meet a tornado, ride on it and fly. Well, the one I prefer to be happen will be earthquake, those cracks which open another dimension for me to meet myself at another time space. And when the crack gone, the route to other dimension is closed and we need to wait for another earthquake to enter again. We cannot stay at the dimension that is not belongs to us as this will distort our own world.

If all these happen, I guess our life will be more interesting and disaster will be our friend but not foe in the future. And at that time, disaster will no longer define as disaster.

    

Checkers, Draughts, Friendship

  Among so many chess games, the one that I prefer the most is Checkers or known as Draughts. The reason that I prefer this game is because it is simple, way simpler than Chess. At first you are only able to move to the front, until you be a king, you are able to move backwards freely.

  I always imagine that myself is one of the twelve Draughts. I am a Draughts who always fight for my own good and dream of being a king in the future. Well, I have 11 friends, as always those who hiding behind stay a higher chance to be a king than others. This means that Draughts who sit in front are always be the one to be sacrifice and to complete the others. So, I decided to always sit behind my friends and wait for the chance to be a king. However, sometimes I feel so scared and lonely because my friends leave me one by one and ending up I getting alone. I am thinking why this kind of game always requires sacrifice, why the one who sitting in front always be sacrifice. If we change the game rules a little bit, I can bring back my friends once I be a king, I will not be lonely and able to pay back my friends for what I have granted from them.

  Always treat our friend with true heart because we cannot take them for granted. No one born to sacrifice, we all have our higher purpose and we stay a chance to pursuit it. Appreciation is needed in friendship.

Experience in Chinese New Year

  What can make someone's Chinese New Year special? If you are someone who like to challenge everything, maybe wearing a black or dark colour shirt will make you the day. But for my case, this is not a new experience but my reunion dinner is bit weird. My house dining table is a little bit small, so it does not really fit 5 of family members at once. So, 4 of us were having dinner on that night while my father will wait one of us finished eating and joined us. Yet, we felt satisfied with it and we are still good and happy throughout the year. Who said that reunion dinner must be sitting together and have dinner together? Yeah, maybe you are eating together on a same table but without feeling happy, I felt it is unnecessary. Just imagine ourselves were the air during reunion dinner, if we were the air in a happy family, the family enjoyed every moment they spent together, as air. we would felt happy too due to the positive words or good atmosphere surrounded us. So if the air is happy. fresh air will be produced and the family will live in a fresh air condition everywhere because the air will follow them wherever they go. However, if the air met a family who did not enjoy their reunion dinner, the air quality around the family gonna be bad throughout the year, and you know when you inhaled bad air, healthy status going to be having red light and etc. So, no matter where are you or who are you going to be with, remember to enjoy it and appreciate it so that good air will be following everywhere.

Car's Windscreen and Dust

I drive to UTAR everyday. There are lot of construction going on nearby my uni and the air condition is really bad and getting worse. Everyday when I back to home, I will splash some water on my car's windscreen to clear the dust on it, just to make it looks nicer. However, every time when I go to uni, it gets dirty again. The process to get dirty is very easy, I am driving my car and whenever any moving vehicles moving in front of my car, my windscreen just get 'brown' in few seconds. When I look at my windscreen during jam, I found that actually this is quite similar with human nature. When a person wants to learn how to be good, it always takes a longer time to nurture the good characteristics but when comes to bad characteristics, we might doing it without we realizing it. This concept is exactly the same as to learn what is good, a thousand days are not enough: to learn what is evil, an hour is too long. In our daily lives, there are lot of evil stuff around us, all these negative stuff will affect us without we realizing it. So, whenever we have free time, take a break and have some conversation with our inner-self and reflect on ourselves, whether what we are doing are correct or wrong, and we will be better and better in the future.

Orange Citrus

  Every Chinese New Year, Chinese in Malaysia must buy a lot of orange citrus to celebrate CNY. I always wondering why we must buy orange citrus but cannot buy other fruits? Maybe we can present banana or purple mangosteen to our relatives but not orange citrus. Maybe we can even combine everything and present to our relatives, orange citrus, banana and purple mangosteen together. A hamper with different kind of fruits with tons of different vitamins must be sounds better than only orange citrus but why this does not happen in reality. Imagine if I am a hamper who representing my owner, rather than consisting only orange citrus alone, the feeling of having different fruits in myself is just like having a 3-in-one felling, for example charming, handsome and strong. This feeling would be great because this is how a hamper judge himself. Everyone love anything come in package, it is just like the facial products nowadays too, it can be up too 8-in-one or maybe 10-in-one. How great it was if I am hamper contained every fruits in this this Earth during CNY, an all-in package, the best in this Earth.

47 RoNin

  I watched '47 Ronin' on last Saturday, 18/1. I was so exciting and happy because the trailer was so nice and awesome. Most importantly, it included a lot of fighting scene during the trailer. So I assumed this must be an superb good action movie. Well, every story begins with a brief introduction, then rising action, climax, falling action and to denouement. Anyway, I am not giving any review on this movie but I am interested with the story behind this movie, the '47 Ronin'. A tale that came from Japan. Before I knew about ‘47 Ronin', all I know about Japan's samurai are they are good in playing swords, they are swift and have a high dignity and self-respect. However, after i watched this movie, the loyalty that the ronin had shown was really surprised me. They are willing to revenge for their lord even though they knew they gonna be sentenced to death by the Shogun. Even if you are survive, you will still be sentenced to death. I respect and salute the spirit that they had shown as a samurai and ronin.

  Link it back to the reality now, how many people are willing to show such loyalty to your country or organization anymore? I am not talking about sacrifice yourself for your country or organization but just to be more concern about it. People in this century tend to complain more than appreciate. Even we have a better environment, we are still not yet satisfied and do not appreciate. I guess we should have been more grateful about what we have although that might not be the best. Yeah, for me this story is to remind the society about the importance of loyalty, no matter to your country, superior, parents and etc.

Source: Retrieved from http://movies.buzzintown.com/47-ronin-3d/pid--455164/show--photos/id--699207.html

Source: Rinsch, C. (Director) (2013). 47 ronin trailer [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAHzFoX1hcQ


Reference: F.W.S. (n.d.). The 47 ronin. Retrieved from http://www.samurai-archives.com/ronin.html