Sunday, July 27, 2008

I'm not here to add on to the posts on how we can be better as a class and how we should treasure the class as we only have a few months left and whatever. To tell the truth, as much as I usually try to deny it, I am going to miss Nanyang. But will I miss 409? That's a matter I have yet to decide on.

ANYWAY (my favourite word.), here's an excerpt from one of the books of the Dresden Files written by Jim Butcher (Yes, those books you've seen me burrying my head in between block tests, when I'm not studying. And to tong and eening, yes, those books I've been searching for like a mad woman. Singapore libraries are so lousily stocked.) that really set me thinking. I hope it has some sort of impact on the rest of you. Is Nanyang really that painful? And what is pain?

(NOT BY ME NOT BY ME NOT BY ME (three times in case you don't understand the meaning of NOT BY ME)

Sure, we’d faced some things as children that a lot of kids don’t. Sure, Justin had qualified for his Junior de Sade Badge in his teaching methods for dealing with pain. We still hadn’t learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you’re just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.

Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There’s the little empty pain of leaving something behind - graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There’s the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There’s the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn’t give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There’s the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand besides a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.

And if you’re very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last - and yet will remain with you for life.

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don’t feel it.

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it’s a big part, and sometimes it isn’t, but either way, it’s part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you’re alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

- An excerpt from White Night, Book Nine of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher