April 10th, 2009

FYP is left with just presentation, and still I have 3 more projects to go. Over the past months I've learnt quite a lot other than school stuffs. Much has happened, and here are my updates:

My spirituality I will say is a bit chaotic. My life has been hectic with FYP and projects, maintaining relationship, cell groups, etc. I've been attending progsifs too some time. Especially concept wise, my spirituality has been experiencing a turbulence, a vacuum, a dead end! It might be bad. This academic mind is too good to make rationalizations and its been killing me. I'm upside down and aimless. If last time a simple sermon message can move me and correct me, now its easy for me to make rationalizations. For example, I am now skeptical to the sentence 'What is your motivation?'.. perhaps a rhetoric thrown out by some preacher in order to correct the audience motivation. But I know that motives are complex and might be a combination of many motives, and we usually dont have a pure and single motive. Perceiving this in mind, then those kind of sentences or part of sermon didnt really mean much, i've been numb. The urge for evangelism too, has been quite numb. I know much of the motivations, but why am I so defensive? 'Well we are called for this but I have other things to do too, projects!' And sometimes I went a bit far in defending myself and say 'well we must see the context.' Next thing is about hypocrite. The more I think about it, the more unclear what that means. When we say that someone is a hypocrite, we're judging their motivations. For if one is still struggling, although he shows bad examples while saying good things, he is not called a hypocrite. Fine.. I hope I will be able to clear myself up from this messy and aimless thinking, skeptical about everything (and even my own thinking). But yes, God still speaks through the sermons in the church. So I guess its ok. I'm limited, but God still walks beside me.

Next, relationship is fine, though kinda rocky at times esp when both of us are tired and spiritually down. Actually I learnt much from here too. I learnt to see and reflect about how God loves, and to recognize how short I am from practicing it. From the arguments, I was enriched academically. I understood more about human nature, and about how capable but twisted I am in winning arguments. I know I've perhaps been biased, and I can direct arguments so that it came upon my favour. People won't win me, but they will be simply disapprove of the conclusion. I've learnt about debating techniques (not mainly from this relationship but I also had been gaining the experience of thinking a lot). Now I became unsure of myself, simply because i can win many arguments. When people stand becomes strong, then I will find myself running towards skepticism, throwing very fundamental questions they can't really answer, until they land on one sure ground: presupposition/bias! Next, I noticed that when arguing with people who dont like to think much, or dont like debating and explaining how their stand is relevant and reliable, simply analyse the factors and throw a counter example! People who dont like to think will normally end the arguments there, and say 'Okay'.. These debating techniques can be very destructive if used with twisted motivations, winning the argument for the arguments sake. Next, regarding human relations I also learnt one thing, that we should often listen to what people mean and not what people say, as human beings are not 100% consistent. In fact they often contradict themselves. Finally, there are 2 categories of things that can make a person angry, and often cause couples to quarrel: emotional and logical. The logical category might involve emotions, but the reason is clear. On the other hand, the emotional cause tends to accumulate little, disapproving things over time. The two problems need to be solved in a different manner.

Anyway its good friday..