NICE

YAY! Another post. Like finally.

HAHA, today it's all about being nice.

Nice guys/girls has always been shown as the victim in a relationship between 2 people as being taken advantage of and not being appreciated for what they have done. Well, there are many articles and videos surrounding that topic already. The reason I want to start of with that is because when talking about someone being nice, this topic will inevitably pop out.

What is my take on this topic? Well, before delving into that, I would like to talk about the whole are of NICE.

Recently, through a discussion and a random event that happen, a question popped into my head. Has the word nice been overused? Well, the very obvious answer is yes. So, like everything that intrigues me, this idea has been living in my head rent-free for the past few days.

The first reason why I think that nice is being overused and even to the extent of misused is because of the hypocrites that use them. Just like everything in the world, there will always be the "black sheep" in the "family". What do I mean by that? Let's say there is this "family" that are made up of people that are nice. There will always be people that try to sneak in or they are mistaken as part of the family due to the many resemblance that can be found and seen through their actions. However, this has caused the word NICE to be so misused to the extent that it has lost it's meaning. Now, I think people use nice as an excuse for everything, even laziness. Why laziness? Well, I would like to think the majority of the "black sheep" of the nice family are known as the passive "nice" people.

Passive "nice" people are the ones that seem nice by not doing anything. "Awh, you could have totally insulted that guy but didn't, you're so nice!", "Whoa, you totes could have gone first into the lane but you let the old lady go first!" The first example, the person could be just someone who just doesn't care about anything and has no opinion about anything. Hmm... You might be confused why the second example is considered passive. Well, that is because in the second scenario, that person haven't decided on what to eat for dinner yet. HAHA! Why is he not "nice"? Well, because there was no intentionality involved. I believe that in order for someone to be nice, there must be intentions of being nice. Of letting someone be of more importance than you.

Another reason why these passive "nice" people have become so prominent lately is due to the fact that society has been corrupted to an extent that common courtesy has to be renamed as "rare" courtesy. It is because the holding the door for other people is seen as a "gentleman" act whereas it's just plain common sense. You're going through the door, you have to open it. Why can't you just take a little more effort in holding the door for one microsecond longer for the person right behind you to pass as well? Society has become so egocentric that we have forgotten what it means to be a community. It's a shame to have a society that is prominently dominated by technology that aids us in our communication that we have forgotten how to communicate. It's a real tragedy.

Well, another group of the passive "nice" people are the people who just hates conflict. Don't get me wrong, hating conflict is normal, who doesn't hate conflict. I'm talking about pushovers. Those people that do whatever that is asked of them. It looks like they are nice because they always help people when other people are in need (mainly because they think saying no will cause conflict) or they may seem nice because they will help you do anything that you ask them to even if it may conflict with their principles (if they had any). Yeap, not being able to say no is NOT an indication of being nice. These group of people are cowards and do not have principles that they firmly believe in.

An example of this is nice guys/girls. Well, I'm just gonna talk about guys here. ESPECIALLY those that complain about being the nice guy and not getting what they expect from the girl and curse everything around them when they are tossed in the friendzone. It is because you are a coward. Being nice and all is fine as long as the girl likes you back? Wow. Just wow. It's shameful enough that you aren't strong enough to be direct and just let the girl know that you are interested in her beyond friendship, you complain about it when the girl doesn't get it? Your IQ must be off the charts. Don't play the game of charades, pick up your guts and let the girl know. These hypocritical "nice" guy things will not get you anywhere.

HAHA... can't believe this turned into a mini-rant. :P

I just dislike the fact that nice is being tossed around in our everyday life that it's meaning has come close to nothing.

A final note about passive "nice" people: THEY ARE NOT BAD! It's the people that mislabel them that should rethink of the word nice.

Remember, being nice is all about intentionality. You don't accidentally become a nice person.

Distance.

Hello World. How have you been? Well, I haven't had any ideas that I thought was worthy of being recorded down and/or I had no time. Hehe..

Anyways, obviously, the reason why I'm here is that I now have something to talk about. :)

So, distance.

Surprise, surprise, this blog will be talking about friends again. :/

Well, people who know me well would know that only a few things concern me and one of the main things are friends. Friends to me are like investments where the currency is your time and your attention and your care and your effort and your everything. The currency in the friendship world has many variations but that is not important for now so I shall not elaborate more on that.

What I want to talk about is... friendships. I probably have written this down before in a previous blog post but who cares. :P

Friendships as previously mentioned are like investments. Well, at least to me anyways. In the world of friendships, everyone only have limited resources. If I do plan to get close to someone, I will make sure that that person is someone I truly care (or at least want to care) about. But there is a problem. And that's what this post is about.

The problem is that if a certain person is not invested after a period of time, the person will slowly drift away. To me, that's the worst thing that can ever happen. Seeing someone that I used to be close with and staring at a stranger. I may (may? more like will) not show it but it feels painful and I want to cry myself to sleep. LOL

Friends to me are like treasures. I value them very much. Every single treasure collected are of equal value to me. However, sometimes treasure decay over time. No matter how much I try to maintain it in it's pristine state, I will not be able to keep all my treasures as shiny as before as the amount of treasures increases. Which is part of the reason why I don't like digging up more treasures (aka investing in new stocks if we're following the previous analogy). Because if I do that, the condition of my other friendships become harder to maintain. It's worse when the importance of the friendship is one-sided. One party values it highly when the other party just treats it like an option.

Getting close to people have been a tough thing for me. Someone recently asked me "Who are you close to?". At first thought, well... my definition of close to would be someone that I'm comfortable sharing stuff with. As a person who tends to listen more than speak, this is a tough question as I tend to get comfortable easily with people and share things that I think are relevant to the situation or them. That question has made me rethink on who are truly my friends and who are acquaintances. It has help me realised that I am not as closed off as I thought I was.

However, one thing that the question as brought up many perspective that I have never considered. People that I'm closer to than I perceived it to be. All in all, friends are complicated. HAHA... I know... BGR is complicated... But, personally, I think being friends is even harder than that. Mainly because in friendship, there is no commitment.

And that is why friendship is hard. Well.... sorry if this was all over the place. I'm gonna go rest now. Buhbye World.

Of Clouds and Complaints. Of BIG and little things.

I'm back. YAY! Was bogged down with too many thoughts that I just gave up writing about them as it would take me too long to trim them down, rearrange them, make sense of them and finally type it out.

Anyways, many things have been happening in this period of silence. Worldwide, there has been the unfortunate incident of the missing airplane; In Malaysia, there has been the annual haze and also to worsen the situation, there also has been water rationing (although the global event is also related to Malaysia); In my mind, there has been storm after storm of craziness that I had to deal with.

All in all, it has been a beautiful period.

Distance.

What is distance? It means the space between two things. Point A and point B is 20km apart. (That's a great distance, if you are travelling by foot.)

This post will be talking about the kind of distance that will hurt. That makes heart the grow fonder. The kind of distance that makes things awkward.

The distance between people. Not the literal kind, the metaphoric kind.

Friendship is like a steep slope/mountain. The higher you climb, the closer you are to someone. If we don't continually hold on. If we don't continually grab on to the closest rock to you, gravity will do the job and bring you down all the way to the ground.

People have a natural tendency to drift apart. Or should I say return to their original position? We all start out as strangers, right? So, if we don't put in effort the friendship will inevitably get awkward over time and eventually reach the lowest point - the "Somebody that I used to know" point.

Have you ever met someone that you haven't seen for 4 years? How about someone you haven't interact in 8 years? I'm sure the conversation was marvelous! From the awkward hellos to the awkward how are you doings... It's the rarest form of interaction one can hope to encounter daily. Truly remarkable. It will leave you wondering if there is any other feeling that could ever beat this.

I'm going to spend some time to talk about introverts and extroverts. Don't ask me why... my brain just wan't to.

Imagine a world where it's winter EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME! Then, imagine two kinds of people, obese and emaciated. (Just bear with me here) In this world, the emaciated people have to constantly wear many layers of clothing in order to survive the weather; the obese ones have to pick and choose only a limited amount of clothes.

So, the thin people, would more likely grab anything and everything that they can wear and put it on. Of course, without neglecting the sense of style. They need to be covered and surrounded by clothes all the time. Honestly, some of the obese people can survive without any clothes, however, they have to wear something. So, what do the obese people do? They would pick and choose the clothes that they feel most comfortable with.

Although the example isn't that great, I think it does paint some parts of the picture of what an introvert and extrovert would look like. Yes, the obese people are obviously introverts and the emaciated people are extroverts. (Oh man, that last sentence, if taken on it's own, wouldn't make sense whatsoever.. HAHAHA) Although there also exists regular people in that imaginary world, they are called ambiverts. Just like how the obese people in the imaginary world only needs minimal layers of clothes to keep warm, so does introverts need only a small amount of friends around them. The inverse holds true for extroverts.

So, what does this have to do with distance? I have next to no clue. My brain is just going on it's own.

But, back to distance. There are always distance between people. I have been thinking about my distance with people. With the busy-ness that arise in life, I have grown further apart from people that I don't get to meet regularly anymore. During the busy times, this doesn't bother me. But when all is settled and done, I start thinking about all the people I have missed out due to my busy-ness. I'm the kind of guy who would get all busy in life and forget about other people. I can get so task-oriented, I imagine myself living in a world by myself. (with internet of course) But, I've noticed that I have the other side of me. the side of me that is people-oriented, crying out, wanting to reconnect to the world that I used to love and enjoy. The company of close friends that I once had before the busy-ness of life didn't grab a hold of me.

I do stop myself sometimes and take a look around me. Noticing people that are around me. But, they seem to be in a world of their own. It's like an astronaut having been gone from earth for so long and returning only to find the world totally foreign to him/her.

The distance between now and then has grown apart and is continually growing and I can see that it's going to be further and further.

Humble

"I'm humble!" Ah... the most well known self-contradictory statement.

Lately, I was made aware of something that I do unconsciously. Once brought to my attention, I can't help myself but think about it ever since. Yes, as the title suggest, I have been thinking about humility; and no, I wasn't made aware that I'm humble.

Well, not exactly true. I was made aware that Asian has a unique culture to be humble. When given compliment, they would put themselves down, often times giving reasons why the compliment wasn't valid and that their efforts wasn't really much of a big deal at all.

It was an interesting observation that I didn't realize was that unique at all. However, I have realized that I haven't actually seen and live in a culture other than the Asian one. Hence, this observation is true to what I have seen growing up. It may even be one thing that I have picked up as I aged.

What intrigued me was, why I put myself down when given a compliment/when people acknowledge something that I have done?

I grew up in a Christian family, as a result, the parable that Jesus taught in Luke 14:7-11 came to mind immediately. It was a parable about how we should sit at the lowest place when invited to a wedding feast, so when the host comes, he can do anything else but to ask you to sit somewhere better. Well, that's roughly what the story is about anyways.

The first thing that came to my mind was this: Do I make myself humble so others will think that I'm better than those who don't (put me in a better position)? I had a long evaluation in what I was doing my entire life. Being/Acting humble was so natural and done daily that it is now done without any though. It's like second nature.

Then I realized that there may be such a thing as too humble; humble brag may not be as simple as I thought it would be. I always thought that humility was a trait that no one could ever get enough off and that it's the one trait that anyone must have and wouldn't be wrong in having it; I always thought humble brag would mean someone who constantly goes around telling people that they are humble or some similar form, I didn't realize that it could come in disguise as an actual humble act. I guess that's what "true" humble brag is. I have noticed that humility, just like any other thing can be manipulated and used to gain a leverage.

Humility may be one of the most complex thing I have ever thought of. The more I gave time and thought into it, the more complicated it gets. Just when I thought I got it, it just gets more fuzzy.

I guess I'll never be able to fully understand what humility means. (Maybe thats a humble brag?)

Question?

As Chinese New Year approaches, there is one inevitable question regarding love life that everyone will be asked. If you're single: "Do you have a boy/girlfriend?" If you're not available: "When are you getting married?" If you're married: "When are you going to have a baby?" If you already have a baby or even babies: "When is the next one coming?"

It's something that has become routine during this festive season. It's a great question to ask, but when it's just routine. It has lost all of it's meaning.

Misconceptions

When I was young(-er), I used to think that every cars' speed meter was different. (A 60 km/h in two different cars means that they are traveling at different speed.) Furthermore, I thought more expensive cars will travel faster (at 60 km/h) than a car that is less costly. It all made sense to me. Why would people spend more money for a car that moves the same speed as a car that is worth half it's price?

Then the truth shattered my foolish MISCONCEPTION. As I grew older, I gradually learnt that there were so many misconceptions I had when I was young(-er). As I grew older, I learned more and more, this didn't make me a more confident person. I didn't become conceited with how much that I know now. I became worried. Thinking to myself, "How many things that I believe now is false?". Even to this day, I keep realizing new things. My beliefs are constantly being challenged.

Everything that my mind has a logical explanation behind it cannot be trusted fully. My mind constantly questions my own thoughts. Coming up with counter-arguments to every new ideas I have. Who knows, 10 years down the road, I will be looking at my former self and laughing out loud at my stupidity of believing such nonsense.

However, although this constant "testing" of my beliefs causes me to doubt myself. It also strengthens some other beliefs that I have. Some other beliefs that "pass" the test.

I wonder, is this how other people's brain work too? Do they constantly challenge their thoughts? Their beliefs that they involuntarily perceive as truth?

Only time will tell.