too easily contented?
no big dreams, no drive, no achievements.

i'm contented, but i can't help feeling that i'm underachieving when i see what others are doing.
because i know that i am capable of taking on more impressive roles, but i'm not.

i know it's a personal choice.
i'm just afraid i may regret in future. will i?

This is an article I read in mind your body quite awhile back. Found it really interesting so I'd like to share it (:

It works like this: Consider two students who have the same attitude about cheating. They don't think it's a terrible thing, but they know it's not a good or honorable thing either. Suppose that they now have to take a test, say, one that's going to determine whether they get into graduate school. They freeze on a crucial essay question, and suddenly the student in front of them, the one who has the most beautiful and legible handwriting on the planet, makes some answers visible.

Each of them makes an impulsive decision: One cheats to get a good grade; the other resists cheating to preserve his or her integrity. Now they will justify the choice they made. The student who cheated will minimize the seriousness of cheating and thereby become more vulnerable to cheating again. The one who resisted cheating will become even more adamant that cheating is unethical and wrong. Over time, through the process of self-justification, these two students will move further and further away from each other in their beliefs about cheating. It is as if they had started out at the top of a pyramid, close in their beliefs, but, having taking a step down in different directions, by the time they reach the bottom they are far apart. Moreover, they will come to believe that they always felt that way about cheating. Elliot developed the metaphor of the pyramid from an early experiment that Judson Mills did with children, which got precisely these results. The kids who cheated justified their behavior, and so did the ones who resisted.

That is what self-justification does: It sets us off on a course of action that moves us further and further from the original choice point and then begins to blind us to the possibility that we were wrong. The danger is not so much in the first step we take off the pyramid, but in how far we have come from our original beliefs or intentions by the time we are at the bottom.

You know, once you have this metaphor of the pyramid in your mind you see it everywhere in society. One example that we did not include in the book is the seemingly endless argument between new mothers who make the decision to stay home with their children and those who continue working outside the home. What is the reason for each side's certainty that there's only one right way to be? The data show that children are not harmed when their mothers work; women have been working throughout the centuries; in Europe, children go to nurseries and daycare and that's that - no one thinks their little psyches will be damaged. But in the books by women who have left the work force to be full-time mothers (a tiny minority, by the way, of working women - most can't afford that luxury) I find that the heat they bring to the subject often stems from their ambivalence about their decision.

Most decisions have positive and negative consequences. When you're making an important life decision for which there is no single right answer - as is the case so often in our lives - then that decision is going to be followed by huge postdecision dissonance. You will look for all the reasons to justify the decision you made and notice everything negative about the choice you rejected. If you are not comfortable with the decision you made, you may feel the need to disparage and criticize the people who took a different path. They are, after all, a constant reminder of the road you didn't take.

author: Carol Tavris

Being an agnostic atheist I have, for now, concluded that I have just 2 main aims (or mottos) in life. 

1. Live life. 
sounds duh. for me, i believe that death is the end. no eternal life. just eternal sleep. no more thoughts or feelings. since i only get this little span of time to be alive, i'd better make the most of it. do things that i want to, and not waste time doing things others expect of me. take time to travel. meet people. enjoy good food. read good books. learn new things. hobbies. loved ones. enjoy life and being alive. 

2. Make the world a better place.
the first motto is for myself. this is for everyone. it's a moderator to the first, without which i'd be living a purely hedonistic life with no regards to fellow human beings. values such as charity, filial piety, ethics are only remotely linked to the aim of living life. realising how life can be awesome yet meaningless at the same time, i find it important to make the lives of those around us better. we're all in this phase of living, all soon to be dead, so why not let's help each other live happily while we get to live at all. (sounds a bit morbid, but ya.)

i hope this makes sense haha. some bedtime thoughts.

it's a new year!
i think i should blog more often.
i'm finding it harder and harder to put my thoughts into words.

celebrating the new year with 6a was a blast (:
very happy to see everyone again.
loved the fireworks and our awesome view from the 31st floor of pan pacific (:
i shall make it a point to watch the fireworks every new year.
brings in the year literally with a bang. or rather many bangs. 
fireworks to new year is like hongbaos to cny for me haha. 

looking out the balcony at 7am was amazing.
sun was out, but not glaringly so.
traffic beginning to fill the roads and people on the streets again.
it really felt like a new day, a new year.
pity everyone else was asleep except me and sherwyn.
but i guess that contributed to the serene and surreal atmosphere.
i really love the sky at 7. maybe i'll try to wake up at 7 more often.
barely did that last year, and when i did i was always too sleepy to think about how great it was that it's a new day.

happy 1.1.11! (:

Man is, at one at the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life... 


when you already have a few people in your life with whom you are very comfortable with,
you don't feel like you need to find new friends.
you just want to let things be as they are.

social inertia and complacency.
i feel it.

then there is this feeling of needing acceptance from new acquaintances,
wanting to fit in and hopefully find that others enjoy your company.
perhaps making new friends and a whole new set of memories as well.


...Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium.-Albert Einstein


university brings with it new social grounds with many paths to choose, each with its twists and turns.

it would be nice to have a map.