Ya-ne's blog

IF ... by Rudyard Kipling ~ on being a MAN

I read these words on board the STAR LRT (city train). It was framed & hung on the wall of the train. ...the company's way to encourage reading of English literature. Wonder how many actually paid attention to it. But, for me, if you take the train everyday & have nothing better to do, it's good to have something civilised to read rather than just fastfood advertisements plastered all over the walls & in your face!

This is advice to a boy on becoming a man.. I would also read it out to women alike as it would be quite relevant nowadays.

“If”

By: Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

Read more: http://artofmanliness.com/2008/09/06/manvotional-1-if-by-rudyard-kipling/#ixzz0z1LlwhAg

This thing called LOVE..and then there's also LIMERENCE

Since Valentine's Day has just passed, i thot it fitting that we learn what scientists think of LOVE :

What is love?  Dopamine, phenyl ethylamine and oxytocin...

Excepts from Andrew G Marshall's article

...On the one hand, love can lift us up; on the other, it can destroy us.  The problem is further compounded because we generally also feel tremendous love for our mothers, our children, our friends - even chocolate.  Or maybe especially chocolate.

... The pioneering sexologist Havelock Ellis provided a famous but entirely incorrect mathematical formula: love = sex + friendship.  Freud dismissed romantic love as the sex urge, blocked.  Social biologists have scanned our brains and identified three chemicals - dopamine, phenyl ethylamine and oxytocin - which they claim attract us exclusively to our mates for long enough, in their opinion, to conceive and give the offspring a secure start.

...Psychologist Dorothy Tennov interviewed 500 people from different backgrounds and age groups, both gay and straight, about falling in love, and found a startling similarity in how each respondent described their feelings. 

The basic components were:

• intrusive thinking (you can't stop daydreaming about them);
  
• an aching in the heart;
• an acute sensitivity to any act or thought which can be interpreted favourably;
  
• fear of rejection and unsettling shyness in their presence;
  
• intensification through adversity (at least up to a point)
  
• and a disregard for all other concerns. 
  
• a remarkable ability to emphasise what is truly admirable and avoid dwelling on the negative -
  

To distinguish between these overwhelming emotions and the more stable, domestic feelings experienced by long-term couples who are only too aware of their partner's failings, Tennov coined a new term: limerence.

For full article

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/relationships/from_love_and_limerence.htm

according to Wikipedia:

Limerence is a cognitive and emotional state of being emotionally attached or even obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one's feelings, but not primarily for a sexual relationship (although it can further intensify the situation). The term was coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov to describe a near-obsessive form of romantic love.

Limerence is sometimes also interpreted as infatuation, or is colloquially known as a crush, but in reality it is something much different. In common speech, infatuation includes aspects of immaturity and extrapolation from insufficient information, and is usually short-lived.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence

Everyday, think as you wake up

What makes a person contemplate taking he's own life? DESPAIR, HOPELESSNESS..  Humans r defined not by how much $$ they have but present society has forgotten this. We all need more than material gains. A fact many parents forget. A recent spate of suicides should remind us that ACCEPTANCE, RESPECT, A LISTENING EAR WITHOUT JUDGEMENT, A SHOULDER TO CRY ON, A SMILE, A SINCERE COMPLIMENT can build self-esteem and with that give a sense of hope and appreciation for this life that we have :

A PRECIOUS HUMAN LIFE...

• Today I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive!
• I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it
• I am going :
  • To use all my energies to develop myself
  • To expand my heart to others
  • To achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings
• I am going to have kind thoughts towards others
• I am NOT going to get angry, or think badly about others
• I am going to benefit others as much as I can.

I HAVE A PRECIOUS HUMAN LIFE! 

Auguries of Innocence...

 

Auguries of Innocence

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour....

 

Critique of William Blake's poem

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/368.html

From: SSY2K@

The poem "Auguries of Innocence" is a poem full of paradoxes.  It brings up
situations that are unfathomable in our realm of human understanding.  Our
minds are capable of many things, but not all things are readily understandable. 

One such paradox is the idea of holding infinity in a finite space.  Infinity
is also an idea that is not tangible or able to be felt, thus it cannot be
held in side of anything, especially our hands. 

Another paradox in this poem is
very much alike the above mentioned.  It too has to do with a humanly
ungraspable concept.  The ability to hold an immeasurable amount of time within an
hour, which can be measured, is in the human mind impossible.  This poem presents
many interesting ideas. 

All of the situations may be possible but are almost
impossible to be understood.  This shows that the human mind is not the
ultimate thinking machine.  It also shows that not every thing is meant to be
understood. 

However if we look at this from a  different angle one can see that
maybe it takes time for human knowledge to develop and obtain a higher
understanding of life and nature.

---

The Cultured Man (1)

The process of cultivating the potentialities of mind we call EDUCATION. The purpose of education, as generally conceived, is to enable human beings to behave more efficiently than they would do otherwise.

The word EDUCATION originates from the Latin 'educare', which literally means "to cause to grow, to nourish".

MIND is the behaving organism. Any act of the organism is behavior, and in virtually every act some aspect of the mind is involved.

LEARNING is the increase in the facility or strength of any act through training.

By virtue of the fact that man is the most educable of all creatures, he is the creature capable of learning more about the world in which he lives, and the life that has its being in that world, than any other creature. This, in effect, means that he is not only capable of learning what is SOUND but that he is also capable of learning many things that are, in fact, UNSOUNDi. And when one puts together the sound &  the unsound that he has learned, the result is NOT INTELLIGENCE but CONFUSION. 

The CULTURE of the human mind is the finest of all arts - and one of the most neglected. Neglected, not because we are uninterested but because we are confused. Confused about the direction we ought to take and confused about the goals we should pursue. And so, with the best will in the world, we busy ourselves perfecting means to realize a CONFUSION OF GOALS.

.... The things we are interested in, the things we want, our attitudes of mind - in sum, OUR VALUES - are touchingly clear, touching because of our naive faith that the achievement of these values will bring us happiness and that HAPPINESS constitutes the be-all anf end-all of existence.

Excerpts from The Cultured Man

Ashley Montagu, PhD

The World Publishing Co.,1958 

The Meaning of LIFE

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist, survived his ordeal at Nazi concentration camp and gave the world "Man's Search for Meaning" and formulated his own theory called LOGOTHERAPY.

".. For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is NOT the meaning of life in general but rather the SPECIFIC MEANING of a person's life at a given moment.

... One should not search for an abstract meaning of life.  Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. .. everyone's task is as UNIQUE as is his specific opportunity to implement it.

.. As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be REVERSED. Ultimately, man SHOULD NOT ASK what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognise that it is HE WHO IS ASKED. .. each man is QUESTIONED BY LIFE, and he can only answer to life by ANSWERING FOR HIS OWN LIFE, to life he can only respond by BEING RESPONSIBLE.

LIVE as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time wrongly as you are about to act now"

Gandhi's experiments in Dietetics

Gandhi writes :

...writers on vegetarianism had examined the question very minutely, attacking it in its religious, scientific, practical and medical aspects. Ethically they had arrived at the conclusion that man's supremacy over the lower animals meant not that the former should PREY upon the latter, but that the HIGHER should PROTECT the lower, and that there should be mutual aid between the two as between man & man.They had also brought out the truth that man EATS not for enjoyment but to LIVE.

...  real seat of TASTE was not the tongue but the MIND.

 

Art for Everyone..

An initiative by Galeri Petronas, KLCC to introduce art to the masses.. and what better way than on board our LRT (train)

If you could say it in words, there'd be no reason to paint

.... Edward Hopper

 

Every child is an artist.

The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up

... Pablo Picasso  

 

 

G.Petronas 1

 

About NG FOO CHEONG's art

Read this in The Expat, June 2008 (magazine for expatriates living in Malaysia) - featuring one of Malaysia's established artist, Ng Foo Cheong

"What does the human mind naturally perceive when initially confronted by a few square metres of colours, lines, shapes & space?

Ans.:  A myriad of PERCEPTIONS & COMPLEXITIES that are INFINITE. But it is in our OWN UNIQUE CONSCIOUSNESS that we are endowed with a singular ability to INTERPRET the illogical paintings into a logical thought and then into a line of coherent reasoning.

From that solid reasoning, then the IMAGINATION can take over and allow our own inspired visions and concepts to come to the fore."

www.ngfoocheong.com

Hugh Prather on.... Criticism

 

"If someone criticizes me I am not any less because of that.

      It is not a criticism of me but critical thinking from him.

           He is expressing his thoughts and feelings, NOT my being"

  The question I could ask myself after receiving criticism is, "Does his statement give me any insight into myself?" not "Is it true?"

If I say "That's true," those words really mean "I think about myself in the same way."  NO one knows whether or not it is true.

 People criticise us because we are the mirror reflecting their own insecurities. OR we are doing things they only dream of doing but have not the courage to explore. Unchecked, this will lead to anger & jealousy.

Notes to Myself - My struggle to become a person (Hugh Prather)

Why do I judge my day by how much I  ha ve "accomplished?"

 Then I get to where I can enjoy just lying on the rug picking up lint balls I will no longer be too ambitious.

 I'm holding this cat in my arms so it can sleep, and what more is there.

 Hugh Prather, 1970 (first published)

Couldn't agree more!