In the road of education that leads to the university, I would say right now that I'm slowly, but surely making the transition from "idiot who has to walk because he forgot to pack fuel" to "hapless roadkill caught in the headlights".
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While I was unknowingly doing a great impression of the late Steve Irwin in wrestling with my GP paper, only to be devoured by it like King Kong eats planes, it struck me. Not in the same way I'd be struck if I sauntered up to Mike Tyson and said "Yo, what up, nigga dawg?" complete with crossed arms and cool pose, but it still hit me like a notion that won't seem to let me go.
Nothing will ever go according to plan.
Sure, you can go into any given exam with the mindset of decimating the paper with spur-of-the-moment super powers, but in life, not everyone will walk into an ice cream shop and order Chocolate or Vanilla. Once in a while, a tall-nosed Englishman will walk in and ask for butter pecan. Once in a while, a cowboy will mosey in and ask for buffalo wings, only to realise he's in the wrong place. Once in a while, a korean will wander in looking for Kim Chi flavoured ice cream, or ice cream flavoured Kim Chi, not necessarily in that order.
Everybody has those "once in a while" moments of his life, one of unnatural and possibly unnecessary tension, one of indescribable emotions. The moment could be just a few mere seconds. It could span for years and years, thereby betraying its title of "moment". It could come once in a lifetime. It could come every 28 days. It could never come at all. You'd know when you're in it.
Monday's GP paper didn't go much differently from any other GP paper, that is, me writing confused words on a piece of paper while whining and grumbling to the little angel and devil on my shoulder, who are too busy arguing to even listen. But what was different was that I was having a "moment", and a bad one at that. The feeling at the time was that of doing something with full knowledge of not even coming close to succeeding. More on the moment next time once I feel like it.
In this case, if I had a plan, it had gone completely awry. However, if the plan was "walk in, sit down, close your eyes, wake up 3 hours later, get up, walk off", I'd have walked away a happy man, knowing that everything had gone according to plan.
Someone used to say "expect the unexpected". The biggest problem with the statement is that doing so would kill off human emotions, since we wouldn't be feeling surprise and the joy/anguish that comes with it. However, my other problem with the statement is that if you made everything expected, then nothing would be unexpected, in which case you wouldn't expect anything at all, since you'd be expecting nothing. So, the perfect way to go about being both prepared and constantly surprised in life would be to expect nothing.
However, the human mind rarely thinks in such a way. Somewhere in the deep recesses of our brains, or the space for rent in between the ears for some people, we learn to come up with our own projections and conjurations of what would happen. This is where expectation, anticipation and the rest of human emotions come in. When you expect something good and it happens, you are happy. Do the rest of the permutations yourself.
One would obviously make an argument of how emotions teach us how human we really are, but another one would argue that not having emotions would make us better humans instead.
So which do you prefer?
---
While I was unknowingly doing a great impression of the late Steve Irwin in wrestling with my GP paper, only to be devoured by it like King Kong eats planes, it struck me. Not in the same way I'd be struck if I sauntered up to Mike Tyson and said "Yo, what up, nigga dawg?" complete with crossed arms and cool pose, but it still hit me like a notion that won't seem to let me go.
Nothing will ever go according to plan.
Sure, you can go into any given exam with the mindset of decimating the paper with spur-of-the-moment super powers, but in life, not everyone will walk into an ice cream shop and order Chocolate or Vanilla. Once in a while, a tall-nosed Englishman will walk in and ask for butter pecan. Once in a while, a cowboy will mosey in and ask for buffalo wings, only to realise he's in the wrong place. Once in a while, a korean will wander in looking for Kim Chi flavoured ice cream, or ice cream flavoured Kim Chi, not necessarily in that order.
Everybody has those "once in a while" moments of his life, one of unnatural and possibly unnecessary tension, one of indescribable emotions. The moment could be just a few mere seconds. It could span for years and years, thereby betraying its title of "moment". It could come once in a lifetime. It could come every 28 days. It could never come at all. You'd know when you're in it.
Monday's GP paper didn't go much differently from any other GP paper, that is, me writing confused words on a piece of paper while whining and grumbling to the little angel and devil on my shoulder, who are too busy arguing to even listen. But what was different was that I was having a "moment", and a bad one at that. The feeling at the time was that of doing something with full knowledge of not even coming close to succeeding. More on the moment next time once I feel like it.
In this case, if I had a plan, it had gone completely awry. However, if the plan was "walk in, sit down, close your eyes, wake up 3 hours later, get up, walk off", I'd have walked away a happy man, knowing that everything had gone according to plan.
Someone used to say "expect the unexpected". The biggest problem with the statement is that doing so would kill off human emotions, since we wouldn't be feeling surprise and the joy/anguish that comes with it. However, my other problem with the statement is that if you made everything expected, then nothing would be unexpected, in which case you wouldn't expect anything at all, since you'd be expecting nothing. So, the perfect way to go about being both prepared and constantly surprised in life would be to expect nothing.
However, the human mind rarely thinks in such a way. Somewhere in the deep recesses of our brains, or the space for rent in between the ears for some people, we learn to come up with our own projections and conjurations of what would happen. This is where expectation, anticipation and the rest of human emotions come in. When you expect something good and it happens, you are happy. Do the rest of the permutations yourself.
One would obviously make an argument of how emotions teach us how human we really are, but another one would argue that not having emotions would make us better humans instead.
So which do you prefer?
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