Bye, Bye 2016, Hello 2017

Bye, Bye 2016, Hello 2017

Julius Caesar allegedly opined that Experience is the teacher of all things. As I'm saying goodbye to 2016 in this wintry evening in this windswept city, I look back on my 67 years of living on three continents and I am amazed that I'm still alive and live to tell the tale. I must say that I've been with good luck as I did seek adventures, the emotional and financial kinds, and lived life quite dangerously. I never feared emotional devastation and financial bankruptcy. I pushed myself to the edge of the abyss and looked down into it, just to test Nietzsche's maxim, "if you look down into an abyss long enough, it will look back at you." Yes, it looked back at me and invited me to jump. I refused, of course. I did have Will Power; I didn't give in to Despair. What didn't destroy me, made me stronger albeit more cynical and warier. And I now hold most humans I've met in silent contempt. On the other hand, some humans are definitely better than me in many aspects and serve as a source of inspiration and a beacon of hope. 

One never knows oneself if living in isolation. One must go out and interact with others. One must compare and contrast oneself with others. In the process of comparing and contrasting, one must respect facts. The human animals I have known on the Net are afraid of facts. They lie, cheat, and malign. They are noisy cowards. They are phonies. I wish Hitler were still around so I would point out to him these dregs and scums of humanity so he would order his underlings to round up these sorry animals and transport them to the crematoriums. I think I understand the brutality of ISIS soldiers. They are consumed by Hate. Man is an extreme animal. To some humans, Life is defined not by longevity, but by the search for meaning, of giving oneself to an ideology, no matter how distorted, extreme, and narrow it is, and by giving in to the lust of power and domination and destruction and of course, death. 

There is always a narrative that a human must live by. Every religion and ideology presents a narrative to its followers. A real, truly developed human must come up with a narrative that makes sense and is attractive to him, and not necessarily the one foisted upon him by others. To me, that narrative involves Knowledge. I live because I want to know, because I have an abiding curiosity not only what's going on around me, but also what's going to take place in the future. Specifically, I want to live for at least another 30 years because I want to know what will happen to Vietnam, China and the United States in that time frame. 

Meanwhile I am determined to start living as of the first day of 2017 with joy and exuberance and optimism. And I am continuing writing in this borrowed tongue, the language of The Bard whom I've hugely admired since my college days. I write because I don't know to do anything else to prevent me from going insane and homicidal. 

(To be continued)