My Bucket list of 7 Truckloads of BOVINEcrap

My Bucket list of 7 Truckloads of BOVINEcrap.

1) You cannot CHANGE. This is private enemy number one. We all can change. Let no one tell you otherwise. This fact is unchangeable. It is only whether we change for good or for something less so. Of course, my point is that we all can change for the better. I recall a saying that you either live your dream or you will be working all your life for someone who is living his. And living our dream is all about changing our mindset, our choices and our life. So, we can change. We can change even if changing means taking glacial-like steps towards our goal. John Grisham, before he became the bestselling author we have all come to admire, woke up early in the morning to write his novels one page at a time before leaving for work. He did this without fail every morning until he completed his novel. In his own words, he wrote, "The alarm clock would go off at 5, and I'd jump in the shower. My office was 5 minutes away. And I had to be at my desk, at my office, with the first cup of coffee, a legal pad and write the first word at 5:30, five days a week." It took him weeks and months to write a book but they all added up, page by page, chapter by chapter. And now look at him. He is rich enough to buy a few islands. The point is not about getting rich. It is about you. It's about change. It's about taking baby steps.

2) You can do ANYTHING if you believe. I know many out there will be tempted to cast stones at me. But I ask for forbearance first. This made it to my BOVINEcrap list because the truth is, you can't. You can't do anything even if you believe because it ultimately boils down to knowing yourself, being honest about it and being realistic. This gels with one whimiscal quote, “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it just annoys the pig.” I hope you get the drift – minus the “pig” part of course. The same way that a pig can’t sing, there are just some things that we can’t do. So, this BOVINEcrap no. 2 is more about reality-check than about limitation or giving up without trying. I know this appears to crash with the BOVINEcrap no. 1 above. Most times, it is not about “anything” but one or two definite things and life compels you to make that all-important decision. It is therefore not a carte blanche or blank cheque of anything-will-do kind of mindset. (DODGE!) I saw someone just threw a stone at me with the name "nick vujicic" on it. He wrote the book "No Limits" and he doesn't even have limbs. Now that is one amazing man and I underscore the word "one". But for every limitless Nick you unearth, I can roughly round up double or triple times the limited john, paul and that poor mike sleeping on the godforsaken street. Recall “reality check”? So, yes, you can change. Yes, you can make it eventually. But that doesn't mean that you can do anything if you believe. Again underscoring “anything”. The reality is that many dreams die stillborn, hopes abandoned, investments crashed and trust betrayed along this trying journey we call life. In the end, I advocate a balance between BOVINEcrap no. 1 and BOVINEcrap no. 2. That is, you can darn well change. But don't get ahead of yourself doing it. Lasso in your wild and misguided enthusiasm. Be realistic. Count the cost.

3) You are in CONTROL of your life. There is a saying that peace of mind comes when we tender our resignation from being the general manager of the universe. Alas, there are many general mangers in this world. Some have even elevated themselves to CEO status, that is, Chief Executive of Over-controlling. We are clearly not in control and letting go of this fact for some people is as nail-bitingly hard as trying to resist the urge to scratch that itch in their back. Even in our life, there are many uncontrollable variables. Genes, birthplace, parental background, social influences and political environment all conspire to ringfence us in. They are our default settings early in life. Multimillionaire JK Rowling once said, "Life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone's control." I find that being in control is a delusion and only a neurotic would neurotically hold on to it as if his/her life depends on it. We are vulnerable. Our emotions sometimes get the better of us. We fall occasionally, sometimes quite pathetically. At times, we even fall out of control. I personally lost it a few times in my life and I am only 43. Holding it together sometimes is as tough as trying to pick up a lump of bull's shit at its cleanest end. My consolation however is that I learn as I go along and every lesson keeps me in a state of emotional and mental betterment to cope and deal with the next unpredictable fallout. So I say give up the illusion of control and live instead in a state of readiness and openness to learn from life's many meandering twists and turns. 

4) Love NEVER fails. As someone who have dealt with many divorces for many years, I have seen a lot of marriages broke up. They always starts off like a royal wedding and ends up like a quiet drive thru. Alas, love does sometimes fail (human love, that is). Even marriages ordained by priests, pastors or ministers don't beat the odds as compared to secular ones. Statistics don't lie and a union that appears unbreakable sadly breaks at the first outbreak of a big time crisis. The funny thing is that marriages die even before adultery rears its ugly head. Somehow, the first thing that kills a marriage is distraction. When one gets distracted, his heart gets divided. And when his heart gets divided, his devotion gets invited...elsewhere, that is. There is a saying that "when there is marriage without love, there will be love without marriage." Honestly, I have no formula or a 5-step manual to offer to guarantee that love and marriage, like horse and carriage, stays firm together like young cartilage. But for me, I guess the greatest gift to my children is my marriage and that motivates me always to put my wife first and myself all the way back in the row after the hello kitty queue. And by simple logic, not looking for no.1 for myself means that I am always mindful of being a servant of love and not its awful dictator, acting by whims and fancies.

5) Life is UNFAIR. Yup, I know. This runs counter to what we have been hearing. "Life is unfair, what" - how can that end up as BOVINEcrap no. 5. Isn't life unfair? Well, it is all about perspective. True, life is unfair. And I guess that is why Dr Goh Keng Swee once told Wee Cho Yaw that it is better to "be born lucky than smart". Or if I may add, "better born lucky than rich, powerful or pretty." Because wealth dissipates, empire falls and appearance ages, so a lucky man is definitely a happy man. But lady luck is extremely selective about who gets hitched by her. So, for the unlucky large majority, life can be very unfair. However, this is as far as I will go with it. It is BOVINEcrap no 5 not because it is untrue. But because too much of it makes miserable wretch out of us. It's like being OD'ed on negative overkill. I would like to turn it around to daringly exclaim that life is more fair than unfair because we need to count our blessings. For the so-called unlucky majority, there are many things in life to be thankful for. And a heart of gratitude is the first crucial step to a heart of quiet contentment. Furthermore, my fear is that we gripe so much about the unfairness in our life that we tend to overlook the less-obvious-but-no-less-important blessings staring right back at us. You see, each of us alive can consider that fact as blessing no. 1. This is followed closely by robust health. And then, if we reach out a little in faith for blessing no. 3, we will discover this truth: “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” And being who you are is enough to make a difference in your life. This difference, if committed to the end, will eventually tip the scale back in favor of fairness as a whole. So, life is unfair, ok, I hear you. But that doesn’t mean that you are obliged to add your weight to it.

6) Death is the END. Well, I can’t really argue with that. Death is indeed the end. But then, I guess there is another end worse than death and that brings me to BOVINEcrap no. 6. And mind you, I only make this a BOVINEcrap for ironic milking. Death may very well mark the end of a physical life. But what marks the end of living is not physical death, but the death of one’s spirit to live. I think we should not treat this lightly. I can’t think of any fate worse than to live outside and yet slowly dying inside. I know of people who live without meaning and purpose. They are merely existing. This is to me a death worse than death itself. I recall a saying by Picasso, “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” For such a person, devoid of both meaning and purpose, his life is all about taking and taking and seldom giving because he has yet to find his gift (or calling). My takeaway on this is that every life on earth has a special groove made just for him or her. But he/she has to actively search for it. It is a gift to be sought after because it has his or her name on it.  This is one’s reason for and joy of living. And to die without finding it is to have lived unfulfilled. Some of you may think that I am being too idealistic. But I think there is nothing wrong with idealism if it gives us reason to live our life to the fullest. Let me close with this well-wishing, “May you live everyday of your life.” Really LIVE!

7) We JUST happen. Finally, the last BOVINEcrap on my list. I reserved this last bit for those who don’t believe in anything that cannot be proven by science. The truth is, science, like law, doesn’t have a long reach. It is limited. Personally, I don’t think we just happened. Between the mystery of our origin and solving this mystery, I choose the former. Science has tried to solve this mystery by concocting up such theories like eternal inflation or multiverses and matchmaking them with darwinistic evolution. I think it is just a marriage of convenience and nothing more. I also think that it merely replaces one mystery for another with a hastily slapped-on label called “problem-solved-let’s-move-on.” I call this trivializing the infinity or evading eternity. Alas, the mystery of our origin will remain as a mystery whether that irks some people or not. I say this not because I prefer ignorance to discovering or learning. Mind you, I endorse learning as much as I endorse living to the fullest (I have a home library that I am so fabulously proud of). But the fact here is that what science cannot prove doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. This just smacks of scientific imperialism to me. After all is said and done, I always want to keep an open mind of things. I do not want to close any door, especially the metaphysical ones. Because you never know who might just be waiting for you at the other side of it. Cheerz.

* cover image taken from here.