Assorted Notes

SATURDAY, 8 NOVEMBER 2014

I noticed a meme in my Twitter feed today of a young girl clutching a Bible. The overlaid text said:

GOD LOVES YOU SO MUCH … THAT HE CREATED HELL … JUST IN CASE YOU DON’T LOVE HIM BACK

It made me think: I know what my opinion is on the matter, but how do people who self-identify as Christian respond when they see something like this?

Suppose a person who doesn’t know much more of the Christian religion other than that it is one of the Big Three says to a person who identifies as Christian: “Tell me about your faith. Explain the basics to me – the story, if you want.”

I believe if this scene is repeated with ten, or twenty, or a hundred people, it’s simply a matter of time before someone would say: “Hold on! What you’re saying is that God loves me, but He created hell to punish me just in case I don’t love Him back?” And this person would be most sincere in asking this. He or she won’t be trying to be funny or difficult! For this person it will be a logical conclusion to the story they were told and to the principles that were explained to them.

What would be the reaction of the person who lives and thinks and talks as a “Christian”, and who sees him- or herself as a member of that particular religious community? Would they say that something was explained incorrectly? Would they say the other person misunderstood the whole story, or that they were not listening properly? Would they apologise and give the person a name and phone number of a different Christian who is known for being good with explaining things that others easily misunderstand?

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THURSDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2014

Keys on the keyboard don’t hit themselves. The mouse clicks, but only when I press one of two fingers down on its flanks. Words clot on paper, but get stuck when I’m talking to myself out loud … which, to be precise, is only half a truth, because words also get stuck in my throat or hide behind my teeth when I want to explain something to someone, or when I want to bore them with an anecdote about the European middle ages, or with one of my famed opinions.

Not that I’m implying I know so much about the European middle ages that I can entertain just about anyone on a street corner or on the subway with stories about it, but I have read a few articles on Wikipedia, watched a few documentaries, and, as a matter of fact, read a number of books on the subject.

This can, in theory, make one appear smarter to other people, but it definitely doesn’t make you a better banana chooser. I mean, three of my last three bananas had bruises! Were these bruises already present under their golden skin in the supermarket, or did I crush the fruit when I put my half-litre cup of green tea on top of them in the basket mounted in the front of my bicycle?

That very same half-litre cup of green tea arrived leaking beverage onto the road by the time I made it to the hauntingly deserted area where I’ve turned two empty rooms in an old house into my “office”. When I took the bag with the tea and the golden yellow bananas from the basket, tea spilt all over my shoes and my trousers. “What the …?!” I wanted to scream. Then I realised the bag was leaking. Did the cup break? Did the woman at the tea shop not close the lid properly? After the bag had dripped tea on my shoes and my neat trousers for approximately twelve seconds while obscenities flowed unarrested from my mouth, I ran into the street, took the cup out of the bag, and threw the tea in the bag in the drain.

Crisis averted.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the European middle ages or anything in which anyone, myself included, is even remotely interested.

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WEDNESDAY, 29 OCTOBER 2014

On Sunday, 14 November 2004 I wrote:

The ultimate question is not just what you live for, the question is what you will die for. My opinion is you die for the things or the people you live for, for the causes you serve.

Contemplating this note, I thought: People who have children have something to live for, and something they will die for.

I mention this not because I wish I had children; it is simply a theme that often surfaces when I think of major issues that affect the lives of many adults.

Inevitable questions: What do I live for? What causes do I serve? What will I die for?

Answer: I have a partner. I love her. I don’t normally think that I live to make her happy, but it is something that affects most of my important actions and decisions on a daily basis. Would I be willing to die for her, if that ever becomes necessary? Yes, I would.

——-

I later discovered there was a follow-up to the original text, on Monday, 13 December 2004:

The point is to live for something, so when we die, we will know our lives were not in vain.

* * *

The question then is, what do you live for?

Many people will say, “We live for our children.”

I ask: What does that mean? You live for your children, they live for their children … at some or other point someone will have to live for something else, whether they have children of their own or not!

I think it’s ill-considered, even dangerous to say you live for your children. It feels right. You love your children, and you will surely take someone’s face off to save your children, so … it can only be right to declare: “I live for my children! And for my wife … (or my husband).” Isn’t that true?

No! It’s something that feels noble and right – and it looks noble and right on paper, but in actual fact one generation simply replaces the next with no proper understanding of the value or possible purpose of their lives, other than, “I need to have children.”

Does anybody else hear alarm bells going off?

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FRIDAY, 24 OCTOBER 2014

One morning when I was five years old, I sat in a tree in our front yard waiting for the kindergarten bus to pick me up. My mother was in the kitchen making me a sandwich. The next moment the bus stopped in front of our house. I jumped out of the tree, opened the garden gate, and got into the bus.

As the bus was pulling away, I saw my mother standing in the front door with my sandwich in her hands.

It broke my heart. Years later I told her how deeply it affected me.

I am now 43. This morning I made myself a sandwich, kissed my wife goodbye, and cycled to the subway station.

While waiting for the train, I put the plastic bag with my sandwich on a bench. I reminded myself not to forget the bag (I easily get lost in conversation with myself).

That’s when I remembered the incident with my mother and the sandwich when I was five.

I wondered how I would have felt if my wife had made me the sandwich and I forgot the sandwich on the bench.

To my great pleasure, I realised it would have been deeply upsetting.

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WEDNESDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2014

This morning at the tea shop I met an elderly gentleman from some Western country. (He was wearing a sleeveless vest, so his pink shoulders revealed his geographic origin from quite some distance.) After he subtly flirted in English with the owner of the business and with her mother, he turned to me.

“Are you an English teacher?” he inquired friendly enough.

On my confirmation, he noted that almost all the foreigners he meets seem to be teachers.

“There are some engineers as well,” I informed him.

When I left the shop, I couldn’t help but shake my head to the strangeness of the question.

Imagine the first question someone asks you is, “Do you make money by cooking food in a restaurant?” Or, “Do you make money fixing cars?” Or perhaps, “Do you make money by representing people in lawsuits?”

I find it most curious that people consider it normal when they first meet you to ask, for all practical purposes, “How do you make money?”

Would it be rude to ask, “What’s it to you?”

Of course I understand why people ask each other these types of questions. You have limited opportunity to identify someone as friend, enemy or neutral; how someone makes money is admittedly an easy start. (As if anyone would admit they steal cars or rob banks to put food on the table.)

Nevertheless, I would have enjoyed giving the man a breakdown of my writing projects that don’t make much money but that holds a lot of value to me, and even of other ways I do make money, but that can’t be expressed in one-word labels such as “English teacher” or “engineer”.

It would also have been good to mention that many Westerners only work as English teachers in Taiwan to be able to travel or to be able to spend time on their music, or on other artistic ambitions.

When he asked me if I taught at the local primary school, a few blocks from the tea shop, I said no, I work at a language centre in the commercial district.

“It’s just a part-time job,” I added, “but it keeps me alive.”

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