Work in progress

Work in progress

Seeing is Believing

What is real?

Does reality mean only external things - the happenings around us? Or does reality consist of what is without as well as within? Do we take into account our thoughts and ideas, our dreams and visions, our emotions? If yes, how are we to verify whether the spiritual experiences, for example as expressed by the mystics, are real? Many of us can relate to the testimonials of the mystics as if they are ours, especially pertaining to theme of the oneness of the universe, even though we come from different beliefs. However, we cannot subject these testimonies to scientific experimentation nor can we disapprove of them as untrue.

What if you take reality to be represented by a timeline? I was eating at a crowded mamak corner when this man whom I was sharing a table with opened up a conversation about his concept of reality being the here and now - this very moment. It seems from the Big Bang till many generations ahead of us, the only reality that matters is this very moment when I am breathing the air and holding the cup. He seems like a preacher full of fiery enthusiasm, and he was actually practising what he had preached, trying to convince me that this very second is the only reality - and if he were to squash my brain between the palm of his hands, I would (obviously) cease to exist. But we don't live for the moment. We are creatures that can reflect, dream, enjoy music, appreciate art, marvel at the Twin Towers, get angry when we miss a U turn, get frightened when we lost our way!

Here, I thought this man was probably one of the many frenzied individuals who believed in the familiar saying, 'eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die'. In other words, life is short. But this person is more neurotic than I thought because he actually believed in living only for that very moment whether he was breathing or eating or whatever. I was actually looking very hard for any sign of neurodermatitis in him!

If, as I have mentioned earlier, we are to take the universe as a whole, then the whole process of past, present and future should also be taken as a whole, as if they exist together in a way that only a Creator would know how. And the Creator would also have to exist outside that timeline in order to see through everything. It's like looking at a straight line ( a 2D object), in a 3D environment.

I remember watching The Polar Express, which was shown at the IMAX 3D theatre at Berjaya Times Square.It has a beautiful storyline about a little boy, along with a few other children still in their pyjamas, taking a magical train ride to the North Pole. During the show, I could see many children as well as adults sitting in front of me, actually reaching out to try to catch the falling snow. The hissing and squeking of the Polar Express were more real and scary. Even the artwork looked more outstanding. In future, we will all be watching movies like that. Would you like the feel of cobwebs dancing on your nose, water sprinkling on your face, or a canonball hitting you as you watch the Pirates of the Carribean ? And how about sitting in a computer controlled mechanical chair as you watch the Batmobile maneuvering a tight corner somewhere in Gotham City. If you are coming to KL during these long holidays with your children, you may want to bring them to IMAX for it is now Open Season!

Still on the topic of reality, the following excerpts from Margery Williams in her book The Velveteen Rabbit illustrates this beautifully (with apologies to plastic surgeons ) -

'What is real?' , asked the Rabbit one day when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender before Nana came to tidy the room. 'Does it mean having things that buzz inside you or a stickout handle?'

'Real isn't how you were made,' said the Skin Horse, 'It is a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with but really loves you, then you become real.'

'Does it hurt?', asked the Rabbit

'Sometimes', said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful, 'When you are real, you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once', said the Skin Horse, 'you become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hairs have been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all because once you are real, you can't be ugly except to people who don't understand.'

A faceless and voiceless society

The internet community is becoming a faceless and voiceless society especially with the increasing popularity of blogging and text messaging. The same holds true for the 16 million mobile phone users in this country with their SMS and voice messaging. As technology gets better and better, we will sooon have video messaging. A new platform streaming into our internet blogging lifestyle is podcasting or audioblogging. This is the seduction of new technology and we must reap its benefit before it goes out of fashion.

Yes, this is a great time for the autistic individuals to make their presence felt in society! Autistics are inward looking people who lack social skills and the sensitivities belonging to a normal social person like establishing eye contact, facial and bodily expressions and proper voice tone. These conditions are predetermined genetically (God bless them). It is becoming a dream come true for them because they are known to be attached to computers and IT know-how. The same may hold true for other unfortunate individuals like the social phobics, the speech impaired, the stutterer, the deaf and dumb, the semi-paralysed and the handicapped (God bless them all). Do you know that Bill Gates, a very capable and high functioning person, has some autistics traits and poor social skills? In a book written by John Locke titled Why We Don't Talk To Each Other Anymore, it was mentioned that he would comb his hair to look presentable before emailing. He would rock his chair repeated during meetings when the tension was high; he had dated on a virtual romance and would rather chat to his date online and over the mobile phone about a movie that they had watched together than to do it face to face.

Now, blogging has entered the mainstream. There are many 'ready to go' free blogging service like this one that makes your entry into the blogosphere so much easier these days. I believe bloggers will supplant the mainstream newspaper one day.

There are also many people who do not blog. There are people are witty and outstanding when it comes to actual conversations. They would effortlessly talk about everything under the sun including politics, business, childen's education and current issues. We sometimes need an environment of such nature (eg in a local kopitiam) where the spirit of conversation, the humour, the color of various emotions are given full freedom of expression. For this reason, I have also purposely left out many issues of daily concerns in my blog because I knew they could be found in other blogs but more importantly because these are best discussed in an open, face-to-face settings with friends and relatives.

However, bloggers would argue whether you would sacrifice your time and money to travel 10km for a business meeting when you can easily do it online. I say we need a balance of both. I am not against building your blog into a social network platform as, hey, I am a blogger myself! Some activities like virtual dating, internet TV gospel, online counseling service and virtual job interview are making their presence felt and we cannot stop them. Living in a global village, it is hoped that we can bring people living everywhere, especially in remote areas, together. Connecting humans, as the Nokia slogan says. But we must move away from our computer screens into a more personal, interactive lifestyle. We cannot afford to turn from becoming TV addicts to computer addicts.

If society as a whole, even among the majority of us who are not socially impaired, begin to embrace this speechless and faceless technology without the intimacy of human warmth, I see a future where we enter into a newer version of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

And now, I am just happy to let my painting do the talking.....

A wet path

I would like to devote an article today to a man who had been an inspiration to many. A nobel prize winner, a seasoned politician whose motto was 'never give up', a writer, orator and last but not least a painter whose art now hangs in numerous galleries and museums. He was the man who led Britain to victory during the WW2. His name is none other than the great Sir Winston Churchill, whom many believed to be the man of the 20th century.

He had been in and out of parliament so many times during his more than 50 years of political ups and downs but in the end, it was always his resourcefulness, optimism and courage that pulled him through. He was a controversial man and not everything he did was successful. He was made a scapegoat for every bad things that had happened to England including the Great Depression in 1930. His judgements were increasingly being criticised by his colleagues before WW2.

He was a successful and extraordinary writer. His style of writing protrayed his personality. He wrote about history, the 1st WW, and thought provoking essays about the contemporary political situation around the world. During his years out of parliament in the 1930s, this great soul wrote about the increasing aggression of the Nazis and evil deeds of Adolf Hitler. However, his warnings were simply ignored. It was a case of passive injustice. The people were guilty by association. By keeping silent. Here, there is a saying 'jaga tepi kain sendiri'. We cannot always be sitting on the fence. We have to look at the big picture and speak out against cases of corruption and misuse of power, for example. We are doing a great disservice to ourselves and the future generation if we remain silent. The British people had failed to foresee the events that led to the outbreak of WW2 and allowed an evil empire to rise.


Fortunately, honor was in his blood. He was called back to office in 1940 and delivered a great speech, declaring that Britain would never surrender. Similarly, his approach to life was one of courage, openness and a willingness to try new things. He took up painting, by accident, at the age of 41 when he was in near despair due to political strife. He was looking at a blank canvas and did not know what to paint until a painter friend told him to just get started. Painting brought joy to his life. He was so enthusiastic that he wrote a booklet called 'Painting as a pastime'. Here he urged others to take up painting. He said ' Painting is a companion with whom one may hope to walk a great part of one's own journey - happy are the painters for they shall not be lonely. Light and color, peace and hope - will keep them company to the end, or almost to the end of the day'. He was quite modest though about his art unlike his political achievements and speeches where he was more confident. He learned how to paint by copying the works of artists, by immersing himself in the galleries studying the techniques of the great masters and sometimes by taking art lessons from his painter friends. He did win first prize in an amateur art competition, painting a red brick house in a winter scene.


Therefore, my friends, I would also like to encourage you to take up 'the joy of painting'. You could also try to do something that you do not normally do in your daily routine. It would be a great stress reliever.

We will be facing a wet season till the end of the year. We are bound to have flash floods, fallen trees, inaccessible roads and maybe a few leaking roofs. Hopefully, we won't have another landslide in another hillside project. However, it is good that the air has cleared. The haze has enveloped much of the city for about a month. Studies have shown that it does not matter how high the air pollution index is, whether it is above or below 100. The danger lies in the particle size. If the particle is small enough, they could seep through our respiratory system and cause irreversible tissue damage or lung scarring, especially in children and the elderly. This is the reality.

Going back to Churchill, his paintings provide a look into his soul. His optimism. His struggles. He believed everything was planned by God. Everything has a destiny. When he reached heaven, he already expected to spend the first million years painting. His affinity to art continues with these words ' we must not be too ambitious, we cannot aspire to masterpieces but we may content ourselves with a joyride in a paintbox'.

I dream one day we would not do anything for the sake of money, fame or power but merely for the sheer joy of doing it.

Hidden Stream

For those who are having emotional conflicts in life, I would just like to let you know that all of us who are living in this 21st century, especially in the urban setting, will always have some troubles that will cause some sort of emotional disturbance in us. Those troubles can come from within us or from the society we interact with. The secret of living a happy and successful life lies in how you manage those conflicting emotions in you.


Aristotle said that to be happy, one must find some pleasurable activity to indulge in, even more so if you enjoy doing it very well and doing it for the good of society. Happiness does not mean you have to feel good all the time, drive yourself crazy by going to wild parties, indulge in expensive things etc. These are all transcient emotions and superficial forms of happiness. You can put up a cheerful disposition but you cannot be forever cheerful and laughing. Genuine happiness is actually a reflective form of emotion. Happiness as in joy is something we all hope to attain in our lives. However, we cannot always reach that emotional high. It is like wanting to scale up the mountain peak everyday.


Each one of us have this thing called temperament. It is a more profound and long lasting emotion which we inherit from our genes and from our upbringing and environment. This temperament or mood is what makes some people to be mild mannered, some to have a wonderful sense of humour and some to be gregarious and some to be depressed. But because I believe our emotions have intelligence and rationality, we can learn to perceive our emotions in the right way, to understand why we feel angry, hurt, embarrassed etc and to make correct decisions regarding how we can manage those negative emotions. We cannot always make the right decisions based on our emotions but we can try. We must also learn to perceive other people's emotions based on their way of life, their culture and language. For example, some Chinese dialects are spoken aloud as if there is a shouting competition and may put off a foreign tourist.

Lastly, human beings are capable of emotions that connect with the universe. Emotions are not just about everyday petty things like hate, jealousy, vengeance etc. Imagine yourself lying on the field and looking up at the stars. You will have that sense of humility in that you are not the most important person in the world. At the other end of the spectrum, you will also have an elevated feeling in that a great God can create an entire universe filled with galaxies and stars and you are part of that creation.

God will make a way

Oftentimes when I paint seascapes, I am reminded of the major tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean 2 years ago, mainly in Sumatra, Sri Lanka and India. Our country too is not spared. Although we cannot with our human mind comprehend why this happened especially when the majority who died were helpness women and children, we must know that there is an ocean of little 'tsunamis' happening in the lives of ordinary folks like you and me across the planet everyday. Lives of sorrow and darkness and confusion - these are quite prevalent in our society today. Interestingly, with each technological advance, our lives become more and more isolated.

But the good news is that God, is here for us all the time, like a father who will never forsake his children. His light will shine on you even through your darkness night, even as you walk through your valley of sorrow. Like a lighthouse. When God closes one door, He will always open another one. You may not understand His plans for you, but if you will only have faith (and faith can start small like a seed), what most people will notice initially is that they are trading their heavy hearts with hearts of joy. It is as simple as that. It starts with a humble bow before Him, and a promise. A promise that is so good - eternal life, and new mercies (or grace) that you will receive throughout your time on earth.

So, make no mistake. Take that leap of faith from the cliff. Reason has an end as it also has a beginning. God has been here for you 24/7. You have been looking out for God all your life. But events have taken a turning. The hunter becomes the hunted. You are stopped dead in your track. Suddenly you hear footsteps...... it is not you searching for God; it is God that is searching for you all this while. Searching for a long lost child.

So let all creation sing. Let the earth proclaim - this is the God of Love. Let us celebrate Love. Hear the oceans roar - God will make a way where there seems to be no way.