I am sure the name Benjamin Glynn, 40, would be familiar to some of us by now. He is another sovereign individual who was sentenced to 6 weeks’ jail for not wearing a mask in the MRT.
He also caused a public nuisance saying, “I will never wear a mask”, and he issued threatening words against two police officers.
When confronted, Ben said he was a boxer, and he adopted a boxing stance in front of the officers.
When sentenced, Ben showed no remorse. He even said that “there is a total disregard for common law in Singapore” and “you are not my master and I am not your slave.”
Ben had a female supporter in court that day, amongst others I guess. She was not wearing a mask (no surprise there) and said that the security officers have “no contract” with her - another sovereign claim.
She even exclaimed that the entire trial was like a “kangaroo court”, and by this time, the judge had to order her to leave the courtroom.
Lesson? Mm...
My point of this post is not so much about them, that is, in particular, Ben. I have lived long enough on earth to know that it takes all kinds to make the world. Money don’t just make the world go round, a variety of colourful personalities sometimes jerk it off its planned orbit for a moment and back.
In fact, if you ask a psychologist, he or she may tell you that it takes a mix of five personalities - neuroticism, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeability, and openness, to explain people. Five main traits, and each of us, at some point, and for some season(s), comes under the continuum of each of them, to varying degree.
Mind your, emotions are unique to us, and each of us expresses them in our own personality imprimatur (personal stamp). No two emotions expressed, like fingerprints, are alike. We carry with us our past baggage and unique gene pool, and are triggered by circumstances we face in different ways, for different lengths of exposure and expression.
Some of us carry emotions too far. And some manage to control it, channeling it towards personal growth and resilience. Others, towards a life of aggravation.
The papers reports that Ben “has been deemed to have no diagnosable mental disorders and fit to plead following psychiatric observation at the Institute of Mental Health”. That may surprise some of us, but I just want to say that not everyone who acts in like manner are mentally unstable.
And not every psychiatric evaluation can detect a behavioural aberration with 100% accuracy. At the risk of oversimplification, it is like trying to take a ruler to measure a brain, and hope that, by its length and volume, you are able to understand the person you are dealing with. It is at times more than meets the eye (or brain).
So, Ben is deemed mentally sound, yet, why does he act that way?
Well, I have learned not to be too surprised with human behaviour as a whole. It is often more complex and complicated than the manifest act itself. Many are condemned by that one public snapshot or screenshot defining their life, which is often just a tip of the personality iceberg.
Sometimes, we are emboldened by the limelight, an audience cheering us on, even an audience of one, and we do things we would never thought we are capable of. Sometimes, pride and self-love are powerful motivators and when you pair them up with ego and obstinancy, you get more than what you bargain for in a spouse, colleague, boss, and even yourself. And some of which are what earthly successes are made of, or they are its prerequisites.
Yes, there is a dark side of you that you had always thought is an upside, because you pride yourself in being able to control it with personal flair. However, things on the surface is always not what it seems.
After all said, there are lessons to be learned from our dark side as well. We may rail against people we deem as narcissistic, machiavellian and/or psychopathic, especially when we are at its receiving end, but many successful CEOs showed many of the psychopathic or narcissistic traits like self-love, charm, manipulation, lack of empathy (when firing someone), impulsiveness (take seemingly irrational risks), fearlessness, and aggression, just to name a few.
(Some vices are the flip side of virtues, so to speak).
Even presidents and leaders of the world exhibit those darker side of their personality. And those same traits are at times the shadowlands that we ourselves have to traverse, stumbles and falls, when we are dealing with our own loved ones.
So going back to Ben and his friend, I don’t think he is going to give a four- or five-star ratings for his short vacation in Singapore. And going by his mufasa-like shenanigans in court, I don’t think he is going to mask up his extreme displeasure towards a sovereign republic taking away his sovereign rights and freedom for about a few weeks.
Well, anyway, I heard he’s a believer, who once “told officers that he was very religious and believed in the “one true Elohim (God)”. And what’s more, he is also a father with two young kids.
So, maybe, along the way, in his journey of self-discovery, he may take the road less travelled, and venture a little into uncharted territory, that is, unfamiliar grounds where he is less cocksure about things and himself, and then find a road forked. And at that intersection, I can only hope he takes the road that will transform him, this time, for good.
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