Am I there?

I can’t believe I haven’t written this down, because it’s been quite awhile since I first formed this question: In your heaven, am I there?

 

***********

 

Talk about “heaven” and this imagery of a spectacularly beautiful garden with no black clouds nor rain comes to mind; talk about “hell” and there comes a sea of fire, with people screaming with agony and pain.

 

There is this movie “What Dreams May Come”, starring Robin Williams which I liked a lot, in particularly how Heaven and Hell were portrayed. Heaven – a place where you would want to stay forever; somewhere only dreams can reach. Hell – a place where you would suffer forever, in ways you can never imagine even in your worst nightmare. Every individual’s Heaven and Hell are tailor made, and few heaven or hell are absolutely identical.

 

Why are there so many religions? One interesting thought came to me was that, possibly, it’s because “Heaven” is different for everyone. For a monk who devoted his whole life to Buddhism, “heaven” would be him reaching to the highest achievable level in meditation and wisdom and become a Buddha. For an atheist, “heaven” is probably having an absolute complete end of life, no “afterlife”; let it be done with when “life” ends; A monk’s “hell” would be finding out he has dedicate his whole life to a lie. An atheist’s “hell”, would be suffering in the fiery pit described by religious fanatics, for eternity.

 

There’s this idea that I’ve never thought about before this movie about people who committed suicide: Taking your own life puts you in hell because supposedly no human has the right to end another human’s life, including his own. As in the movie, the woman who committed suicide was supposed to stay in hell and could not go to heaven to be with her husband. Those who killed themselves would probably prefer death and face the sea of fire, rather than to face what drove them to desperation at a particular moment/period in life. In their hell dimension, incidents they were hiding from would probably repeat themselves on and on. Since they couldn’t kill themselves again, they’d have to face what they were hiding from in the first place forever.

 

But here comes the formation of my question. Since everyone’s heaven is different; my heaven wouldn’t be like yours, and yours wouldn’t be like mine. I’ll take a wild guess and say most people wouldn’t want to spend time in heaven alone, so other people must exist in their part of heaven. What if I want you around in heaven, but in yours, I don’t exist i.e. you don’t want to have anything to do with me? Would that make the people you see in heaven “illusions”? What if my heaven would not be complete without you (like in the movie)? Because then, heaven wouldn’t be paradise anymore. So I ask, “In your heaven, am I there?”

Questions and ideas about “God”

Having some time to spare between appointments, I went to a bookstore to read. It’s been such a long time since I’ve really sat down to read a book I’ve forgotten how much I loved it. I especially love books by Jodi Picoult; she could describe certain feelings that you could hardly put down in words, and there were so many questions and issues raised.

 

******************

I always occasionally look up in the sky to see what shade of blue it is at a particular moment. When I see a clear blue sky, I would think “Look God, see how beautiful your creation is.”

 

**********

I studied in a catholic primary school for three years. We had to pray two times every day, sing hymns and I thought I believed in God then. When I switched schools, I began to learn that although God, Jesus and Virgin Mary are still the main “characters”, Catholics and Protestants are different and confusion on my “beliefs” began. In my second year of high school, we got to watch The Omen I and II in class. The movies scared me and many of my friends into “researching” about the Antichrist and the End of the world stuff. We got teachers to talk about interesting facts about God and the Revelation instead of our textbooks. I started praying again. The fear faded off eventually and slowly I began to see God and Religions in a whole different light. Ask me now if I believe in God, I’d answer yes, but my idea of God is unlike the god I was taught to believe in.

 

*******

Hell

Whenever we had nightmares, my mom would tell us to keep on repeating a chant of some sort of religion in our heads and it would protect us. After Vincent started primary school and began having bible classes, he learned that people who didn’t believe in God would end up in Hell. So after asking, we found our father somewhat believed in God but rarely prayed; Mom believed in Buddhism and Steven, who had yet to start school, believed in whatever my mom did. So Vincent asked me “does it mean that Mom and Steven are going to end up in Hell?” I told him and I believed it myself 100% at the time, that “God and Buddha are friends so it’s okay; those who believe in God or Buddha won’t go to hell.” (I also told my brothers, with the same absolute certainty, that I remembered how it was like to be in Mommy’s tummy before the three of us were born; all three of us sat in front of a TV, surrounded by red walls, and I left them when I decided the cartoons were boring; and later Vincent followed my example and then Steven. As a matter of fact, the same imagery is still in my head right now). Now I have this question, why is that being only six or seven years old, when the concept of life and death is still unclear, me and my brother had to be scared that our family was going to be in hell after death?

 

Naturally I think it is terrible that God had to reduce to using Fear in order to have people believe/acknowledge His existence. I wonder if it is only humans that are spreading the words of God by using fear (if “love” didn’t work)… but if a supposedly perfect being uses fear to get what he wants, should we follow that example since he should have known better (a terrible example comes to mind…)? If we see him as a Dictator, that would be a problem. But if we see him as a Father, who thought that corporal punishment was the way to go (since there’s no more “life” or “death” afterlife, burning in hell probably should be seen as a form of severe caning…) in order to “discipline” his children, it makes the whole concept easier to understand. Since humans are pretty good at coming up with new creative ideas on how to torture fellow humans, God might as well stick with the basics and add something to the equation that scares everyone – engulf in flames and the idea of “forever”.

 

I do not agree with his methods (maybe because I don’t know better) if his idea of “banish in hell for eternity” is exactly the same as described in the bible or us flawed humans have interpreted it to be. But I think there is a possibility that the “heaven and hell” concept we have right now is actually a cautionary tale told to “children”, like the good guys live happily ever after and villains are severely pays for what they’ve done in the end of a children story book. Therefore we were given a story that we could understand in the simplest sense. Considering that the intelligence, living conditions and social norms of humans change over time, it would hardly be efficient to have someone write down all the rules and punishments down. It’s hardly a straight forward decision, whether you deserved to be push down to the ocean of fire.

 

Church

There was this one night before HKCEE: I was in bed, trying to fall asleep by talking to God, and suddenly two unusual thoughts hit my head: 1. I should look for a good church, try it out and see if it works for me. 2. I should go see my grandma (my father’s side. Half the time I don’t think she knows I exist and she was not a pleasant person to be around with) and spend some time talking to her, even though she wouldn’t look at me or talk. I was supposed to have at least 3 months of holiday after HKCEE and somehow I had this strong feeling that it would be my only chance to do all that stuff. However, after the public exam those feelings weren’t so strong anymore so I didn’t start going to church and I didn’t go see my grandma. Then in Form 6, I got into a debate with a few bigger Christians in class of how unreasonable I found the teachings of their fellowship were, and had the conclusion of how dangerous it would have been if I’ve selected the wrong church or join the wrong fellowship; One and a half year later, right after Chinese New Year, my grandma passed away. It turns out that the 3-month period was really the last chance I had to spend quality time with her (another really morbid coincidence was that I just finished my painting of a little boy losing his mother…).

 

A good 30% of why I don’t go to church today is because there are so many things I’d rather do than sit and have someone to tell me how big a sinner I am (I’m perfectly aware of that), how much God love us (aware of that too) or explain God to us, but mostly it’s because I don’t understand why I should go. I think the church exist to serve the purpose of an association, a club, a society; it give people the idea of what the church/religion is all about, gathers people with the same interest (faith), and accumulate substantial power in order to influence modern society. However, I don’t believe in what a lot of church goers do, is to understand God though the interpretation of another flawed human being, or to prove to God/other people how devoted they are to their religion, or to fulfill an obligation as a true believer. I am also not comfortable in joining a group that has proven to be amazingly capable of brainwashing and producing bigots.

 

I don’t understand why people refer to the bible as a book of rules instead of a book of history; I don’t understand if people worship God every Sunday if it’s because he’s “perfect” or that he loves us unconditional, cos if that were the case then why people don’t spend time with their parents or grandparents at least once per week since they too (in most cases) offer unconditional love, and I’m pretty sure a lot of people don’t even talk to their parents two times a day, let alone thank them for what they’ve done. So why everyone is appreciating something that is so far away and impossible to truly know until death, when there are so many people out there that deserve some sort of recognition too? There’s also this question: if God loves us, do we love God?  

 

**********

I sometimes wonder why I’m religious, considering that I’m naturally skeptical.

A Solemn Night

Janette spent the night at my place because we both have to take the IELTS exams today. She has gone through a lot lately: her father is seriously ill and just recently she has attended a classmate’s funeral.

 

What happened was so cruel and sad. He was about to take IELTS too; about to graduate from one of Hong Kong’s best universities in two months, he had great plans for his future. But one morning he didn’t wake up for breakfast so his mother knocked at his door and there was no answer. Finding him unconscious she immediately called for emergency just to learn that he passed away in the middle of the night.

 

It is frightening when the word “death” means more than just a simple expression; to think that someone my age with a similar life could be gone so unexpectedly… I could hardly imagine the grieve his family, especially his parents is going through when I see Janette, who was just a classmate and didn’t know him very well, in such a distressed state. She was already talking differently, using vocabulary only people who have suffered a loss would know. I remember Raymond told me that a cousin he didn’t know very well died two years ago. This year, during Chinese New Year, while everyone was in the living room talking and laughing, he walked past and saw his aunt weeping silently outside the balcony. One of his close friends has also died last summer. She was on her way to do voluntary work when a tree fell on top of her. She was going to start HKU in a month and had a bright life ahead. I thought of people who commit suicide and wondered if they thought of their loved ones before doing the deed; if they were selfish enough to let them go through all that pain. I guess right at the start of your life, it’s not only yours anymore.

 

I come to see that I always had this thought at the back of my head that life is a set of clear classified stages; start talking at three, primary school at six, start working at around twenty five, get married… Janette said Ng Chi Lam (our old English teacher) once mentioned that in his twenties and thirties, he went to a series of weddings: friends, classmates…etc. Afterwards, in his fifties and sixties, he started going to funerals of friends’ parents. Now the only thing that is clear is that in life, nothing really is. If we could not avoid the pain of facing the death of loved ones, I only wish that it won’t come until the later part of life.

 

 

A Visit

Oh so now I can’t even write a coherent and decent passage now?

***********
On Sunday I went to the cemetery with my mom, grandma and uncle. Quite unfortunately it is the time of the month Again, and my knees were so weak I could barely stand. I had to keep myself pacing, careful not to put balance on one specific leg.

There’s so much you get to see and think just from a visit to the graveyard.

********************
I kept wandering around, looking at my grandfather’s neighbors gravestones. There were so many different people, of different ages and background. The more I looked around, the sadder I felt and eventually had to pray for all these people.

There were gravestones with pictures of young ladies, passed away in their mid thirties; pictures of young men, 16 to 20 years old; pictures of just children, a six-year-old boy and girl; there were gravestones without year of birth and death, with a baby picture on the stone…

Some had two pictures on them. A lot of them were elderly couples, a few were two guys (relatively young), some of the graves do state out their relationships, some don’t, which allows viewer’s imagination go “wild” (I wonder why there aren’t gravestones with two Women photos@@). I remembered one in particular, of a young girl and a man in his late thirties or mid forties. They were father and daughter. The young girl died when she was six or seven years old, and the father also passed away within a decade. Was it out of money issues that he shared a space with his daughter? Or was it out of love?

All those young people, I remembered at their age “death” was not something I thought about happening to me. I thought of their parents, how sad, how angry they would be because no one would expect their children to live a life so short. I had to pray, because the sadness I felt for them and their family.

To think, that everyday there’s someone taking their own lives; those who doesn’t treasure their life.

**********************
Usually I don’t go see my deceased grandparents. My father certainly doesn’t expect me to. His side of the family does it out of tradition and respect. Ever since we’ve got older and went to secondary school, no one expects or even asks “the kids” to go. It would be a waste of time, as my father would say. Unlike a lot of fellow Christians, I have nothing against these visiting graves and paying their respects in a Chinese way. I do not find preparing food for the dead, buying fresh fruit and flowers, burning incenses and candles, bowing and “talking” to the deceased “Evil” or “Devil Worshipping”. To me, it’s just all about respect. You pay your respects towards the people who helped brought you to the world. Every customs and culture deserves to be respected.

***********************
Like looking at the different ways my grandparents were buried kind of indicates which side of my family is richer @@. My grandparents from my father’s side have a whole grave (with coffin place) to themselves, which, considering how expensive land could be in Hong Kong, should be pretty expensive. My grandfather from my mom’s side was cremated and had the space of a tiny cubical. My guess is that people from that generation wouldn’t have given thought of the environment or urban land usage yet @@.

Random Thoughts

Sometimes, you really don’t know what you want to be.

 

Sometimes, you just turn into the type of person you’d never want to be.

 

Sometimes, you cannot look at the mirror without wanting to tear yourself apart.

 

Sometimes, you just wonder what is wrong with yourself.

 

Sometimes, you don’t want to be you.

 

Are you just like everyone else, so you’re not special?

 

Or are you just too not like everyone else, so you’re difficult?

 

Should you care for something that you can never do right?

 

Could you not care for something that you never did right?

 

Why do you always feel empty inside, like life has no meaning?

 

Has the feeling gone so deep that the hollowness in you feels so real?

 

Can you forget something that you have?

 

Can being drunk help hide your problems for a period of time?

 

Has the thought of twirling one or two times in the middle of the road you’re crossing till the next car hits you ever crossed your mind?

 

What if the thought was always constant?

 

What if you realize that you will never be what you want to be?

It’s just me, moaning and groaning.

This entry is all moan-and-groan. Do not read because this is unbelievably boring. You have been warned.

 

********

What is wrong with me?

 

I lost my will to live; that’s what.

 

It has been a more than month since school starts. I do not like school as much as I should or would like to; I cannot recognize it as “my school”. I’m having a hard time trying to catch up with all my work. My loner status is starting to get into my nerves. I’m trying to make a balance between school work, money paying work and dance, where in all three I’m not improving much. All I want to do nowadays is to hit bed and stay dead. How pathetic a very-single, 19-year old girl could be?