In Touch

In touch

We must stay in touch with ourselves. In fact, it is far more important to stay in touch with ourselves than with our friends because true friendship is impossible if we don't know who we are. Yet ironically enough, without establishing connections with the outside world, we don't know who we are. The lesson was driven home, at least to me, recently. Humans simply has this peculiar propensity to think more highly of themselves than they actually deserve, including yours truly.

Despite the motto I insert to my sign-off signature, I didn't quite understand who I was until I was tested. I should have been more critical of myself. I should have looked at myself as others looked at me, instead of blithely assuming that what I did and the motives behind my actions were transparent. I conveniently forgot the adage that people see what they want to see and what they want to see is shaped by their experiences and their own darkest desires and wishes. A thief always assumes everybody else is as dishonest as he is. A hypocrite always thinks the world is full of fakers and poseurs. Each university graduate who has a job, is married, and has managed to save sufficiently for retirement always thinks highly of himself and thus resents when somebody bursts on the scene, self-absorbed, and acts in a self-righteous manner and flaunts his bookish knowledge and flouts societal rules and etiquettes. Sooner or later, somebody takes upon himself to bring the child-like man down. When that happens, the scene is not pretty, not at first anyway. But then a strange thing happens, the child-like man all of a sudden becomes reflective and admits sincerely that he has been blind, apologizes in his own idiosyncratic fashion and explains that his motives were not as dark as the self-appointed hit man attributed. To prove his point, he exited the scene because he has been honest in saying who he is. What others mistook for a craving for recognition and using others as "inspiration" for his "literary" output was simply an all-too-human need of self-expression. The only problem was that he expressed himself in his typical immoderate fashion because all his life he has been a stranger to moderation. Moderation bores him. He is an extremist. He either overeats or starves himself a few days later to bring his weight back to normal. He either talks with everybody he meets or he remains taciturn for days on end. I am not defending him. I only state who he is. The whole thing was built on misunderstanding. He assumed others would look at the world same way he did. Others assumed he was a publicity hound, using every cause and everybody to satisfy his ego. Others assumed he had no true love for Vietnam inside him because they themselves no longer have love for Vietnam on account of living away from Vietnam for a long time. Little did they know he came from a long line of patriots. His forebears, his ancestors, his relatives were distinguished people in Vietnam for several centuries, right up to 1975. They contributed to Vietnam. They loved Vietnam intensely. He was and still is proud of his forebears. He inherited something from them in his blood. Vietnam is very near and dear to his heart. His love for Vietnam is real. It is not fake. Not at all. Never was. Never will be. Because loving Vietnam is easy and natural for him, he assumes the same thing happens to other Vietnamese who have similar education and knowledge. But he was wrong. His assumption was incorrect.

All the heartache and surprise and astonishment could have been avoided if he had learned to be more in touch with himself and less immoderate in flaunting his bookish knowledge and flouting societal rules. So the fault was his. And he took the responsibility for it. That was why he exited the scene. He didn't need the scene. He was fine before he arrived at the scene. In fact, exiting the scene would save him a lot of time and energy. Now he has more time to devote to his hobby: learning foreign languages. He made a promise to himself that one of these days he must be able to read Nietzsche in the original and Chinese newspapers. Let us see if he is a man of his words as he often says he is.