***
Doctrine of Acceptance

Sometimes, no amount of trying to see it from the other perspective will amount up to anything whatsoever.

Nearly about the middle of the night, I decided that the onset of insomnia had come fully upon me and that sleep was not going to be a possible occurrence till 4 a.m. With that as a primary excuse, I popped by the Mitre for a couple of drinks and bumped into Mr. Saccharine and a bunch of the other regulars chilling out in a hidden garden I’d never seen before (Great! A secret garden within a secret compound, all my escapist childhood fantasies come true - For the matter The Secret Garden and The Little Princess were two of my favourite classics as a child. The whole idea of a world separate from reality, yet still physically entrenched in it always had had it’s way with me-)

We hung out around the garden till the lot of them decided they wanted to go to the BFD (whatever that’s suppose to initialize) and I thought I was sufficiently exhausted enough to go home and sleep somewhat. But after some manner of trite persuasive oratory on Mr. S’s part, I dropped by his place; and gave the feminist in me a rather fine shock.

“You FIX 10 000 piece puzzles? So the whole saccharine (I’m patient/ romantic/ domesticated) act’s not a stage-up after all.”

Anyone who fixes more then 100 piece puzzles most certainly are Simply So. I had always thought fixing puzzles were akin to folding a million paper cranes and pain-staking hanging them in a deliberate random order on a tree for the current infatuation of choice, as seen in stupid Chinese drama serials. *shudder*

Ah, but I shouldn’t make fun of him. He was terribly nice, and we sat around on the couch for ages till I fell asleep listening to him talk about Iraq (not because he was boring, but because the clock struck 4).

***

I woke up unnaturally early in the morning and made him wake up with me, which he did without much complain. And the first thing on the local paper was this. What the hell? I’d like to think I’m one of the world’s most empathetic people, if not in action, at least in thought –but what use is being compassionate in thought? I don’t think there’s any worth really, but better a good intent then an evil one. That’s the Singaporean way after all, an opinion on everything but the will to act on nothing.-

I read through the article and tried to imagine, what if I was an insurgent. I suppose it’s a rather juvenile thing to do. Imagining your someone else, but it’s entertaining. And it helps you to understand the people you think you hate.

Even if it’s extreme wrong-headedness to picture the person who said you were possessed of a stupidity stemming from the lack of self-control to have said all that, being so void of anything else to do (having been just dumped by her fiancée at the later a few weeks ago and somehow managing to gain a hundred pounds in a fortnight).

I can see why they are doing all these nonsense, but no amount of trying to sympathize can get the phrase ‘I hate them’ out of my head. I hate their religion and everything it stands for. But before you come upon me with a barrage of prejudiced emails, let me say that it is not the One True God I hate, but just the God of all the people I hated. How can my God be the same as that of the person who tells me she’d be sending me to hell?

It’s a fine frustrating piece of work, and good luck to the people who have to solve it. Is it not possible to work out a compromised solution? Can compromised solutions ever really work in the first place among nations at war when they can’t even seem to be reached by nations who are tolerant of each other.

But the insurgents do have the upper-hand. Carrying on with all the mindless killing and propagation of fear might be effective in throwing a lot of nations out of Iraq, but eventually, the US army will remain until things are done the Bush way; or until a second term is confirmed as something only possible in a alternate reality, like the sort you read about in SF novels. (And would them leaving be a good or bad thing come the situation present during the election period?)

All right, presume they do stop the kidnappings, but retained holding whole nations hostage under the threat of ‘columns of rigged cars [that] will not stop’ [exploding]. I actually imagine that might be effective in getting the world to listen to what they want. Those people truly know how to use fear, and raise nationalistic passions; I believe that many people, the general populace, the vulgar horde, people like me, would nod out heads fervently if the insurgents so much so as suggest a compromise.

Look, they are behaving like children, and the rest of the world’s behaving like mothers on menopause. If the kids would stop chanting for a cookie and give a reason why they should be given the cookie, and prove half-way that they should be given it (i.e., stop kidnapping so many people), and if the mothers were to listen and accede on the condition that they do their homework and eat their dinner after… Don’t tell me it’s a stupid analogy, it isn’t. Human behaviour is predictable, and our relationships are all ruled by similar sentiments, whether on a domestic or global scale.

I shall shut up now and promise to write about things that are more preferential to a person of my caliber tomorrow. Which mean’s it back to the sex, the self-chastising and the continual attempt at atonement from the fourth of the 7 Deadly Sins.

xoxox