Voices

"Do it, you know it's the only way. All this pain and suffering you have been through, it will all end after this. It's the only way. Do it, do it!"

It started last year, around August, in the midst of all the work he was doing then. It begun with the faintest whisper at the side of his head, a distant voice somewhere in the recesses of his mind; a voice that became increasingly vocal and frequent as the months pass by. It was after his breakup with his long time girlfriend. It told him that nobody will ever like him.

He blamed it on the lack of time because of his busy schedule. He was studying in school for most parts of the day and worked most nights. Weekends went to work as well, it was the prime time to squeeze in as many students as possible. It was where the money was, tuition. He ate his meals alone most of the time; the meal timings he had were too erratic to be able to arrange any meet ups with his friends. The voice slowly begun to materialise more frequently.

"Why do you even bother? There's no meaning to all this."

At first, he found the voice to be all too defeatist, and simply pushed it away to the back of his mind, as if it wasn't there. Slowly he found that the voice made sense. What was the point of working so hard? What was the point of studying? Getting a useless piece of paper, just to be thrown into another mindless cycle of work day after day? What was the point of life? You do so much, but what ultimately comes out of it? You leave the world alone, just like how you came in. You can spend your life the happiest man, the richest man, but you'll leave just the same way as the poor beggar who lies starving by the roadside. Alone. With nothing. Without meaning. What was the point of living? It all begun to make sense, what he should do.

He took a deep breath, and the stale night air rushed through his lungs. The night was beautiful. Darkness covered the housing estate like a cape, blanketing itself over the buildings whose occupants were fast asleep in the wee hours of the morning, save a few lone souls, marked by lighted windows, dotting the nightscape; blocks of life in the silent night. The stillness of the night reflected his thoughts and sentiments, a lone leaf floating in the middle of a lake. Moving, yet still. Invisible, yet present.

"Don't you see? No one would care if you were gone. Nobody would care! You're nothing to them!"

The voice broke the tranquility of the night. It was right, no one would miss him. His students treated him as a paid worker, useless once there was no need for him. His friends treated him like an object, a marvellous thing, a subject of conversation of a machine who worked without stopping. An object. His parents were always asleep when he was home, and still fast asleep when he left the house in the morning. No one would care if he was gone.

He took a step forward and looked down. It was a long fall. But death would be quick. No one could survive the impact. Falling. Maybe he would finally know what it felt to be free. Falling through space, unbounded and free.

His body was found by a passer-by two days later in a bush.


-

Disclaimer: Not advocating suicide over here, funny how inspiration comes from all sorts of places. Was taking abit of shut-eye on the train but was awoken by horrendous singing of a guy sitting beside me. Hence the word, voices.

Fantastic fantastic fantastic song

Ayurveda

I recently re-read a literature text which I studied for back in secondary school. It was a book titled The English Teacher by R.K Narayan. I remembered how many of us didn't like the book, the teacher included, and preferred doing Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing over it. (The play was the other part of the Olevel syllabus I had to study for)

Since then, I have re-visited this book a number of times, and each time i read it, i gleam something more out of it.

I used to detest the notion of re-reading books when i was young, thinking that re-reading them is a definite waste of time.

Re-reading books like this, I now find great value in it as I realised that as we grow older, we gain different perspectives from the book, and we learn so much more than what the book offers in the first read.

Reading The English Teacher (which interestingly, as I have come to realise, is not so much about the diatribe of the protagonist against the colonial standards of english upon his country), but more so to the idea of inner peace and sanctury.

It is there that these ideas intruiged me to find out more, and subsequently gain a more insightful understanding of the text. What delights me the most is how the text uncovers so much more beyond its initial words and causes the reader to go into ideas of the Ayurvedic faith, as well as the ideas of Ashrama Dharma, in particular the final stage of life, Sanyasa Ashrama.

While I stand on the side of the unreligious, I do highly admire the teachings of various religions regarding the attainment of inner peace and tranquility. We have the strong moral directions of Christianity, the benevolent preachings of Islam, as well as the peace-loving doctrines of Buddhism and Hinduism.

As such, it is nights like this, (had a rather tumultuous quarrel with my dad just now), that i seem to seek solace in such ideas and calm myself to a resolute and calm will, a sign of inner peace i hope, as i note down my thoughts here.

i had a quarrel with my dad, actually over an unimportant thing, in retrospect.

It just really makes me sad how minor things like this can blow up into a quarrel.

just hope they have a great time the next 2 days; they are going on a small trip out of country to relax. I think they deserve it; both my mum and dad have really been caught up with their work the past few months.

-

time to get down to work, gotta sort out some rehearsal schedules and formulate a lesson plan for my classes for the upcoming week.

till then, then.

The 'Mr' Title

The last time i said it's been ages since i blogged here, was last september, 2 posts down.

A new year has since arrived, and I have finished my tenure in serving the nation.

While many of my friends have taken on internships in hope of getting a headstart to the rat race into university, or taken on 9-5 jobs in all forms; waitering, administrative, data entry, i embarked in greater intensity on a job that i have actually been doing for quite awhile.

Teaching.

The sudden influx of some many students placed respectively under my care for specific subjects/areas are indeed overwhelming at times.

If i were to place a rough estimate of how many students I am now responsible for, a little over 60 would be a good estimate.

And with that comes with so many teaching pedagogies that i am suddenly being exposed to. (Not that i am complaining, i have an incredible boss and workmates that share alot of methods in teaching different students and subjects) Coupled with methods that i am quickly learning along the way, my learning curve has never been greater.

There are so many intricacies in dealing with students of all ages, of classroom management, from dealing with the rowdy ones to those who absolutely clam up throughout the lesson.

I now work most weekday nights and a pretty huge chunk of my weekends, since that's when most of my students are free from the backbreaking load of school. Reaching home mostly after 11, bleary-eyed and exhausted from hours of lessons, the resolve sometime wavers.

The amount of work is tremendous. Unlike a 9-5 admin job, where work is typically confined to the office, i usually arrive hours before my actual lesson timings to work out lesson plans and mark their work, likewise for my private students (i prepare their stuff at home). My peers often tell me i have it good; hourly rates of teaching are comparatively very lucrative and financially rewarding. I used to believe it, but now i truly understand the refrain my teachers have told me from time to time; we earn peanuts. Teachers do earn peanuts, for the amount of work they do.

Nevertheless, teaching is ultimately rewarding. The satisfaction from seeing your students grasp a concept, breaking through the wall of a struggling student in understanding a subject, of watching your student grow in the process; it absolutely sweeps away all prior thoughts of the monetary worth (lack of) in teaching.

Just a couple of days ago, i have had a student coming up to me after class asking me questions regarding his homework that his school had set him. After explaining the concepts behind each question, he said thank you and left. While it may not seem much, the words of gratitude he said, as well as watching how comprehension dawned upon him as i explained the question is so immensely satisfying.

The idea of being given the opportunity to empower and positively impact somebody is truly, amazingly fulfilling and exhilarating.

Every lesson is a new challenge, a challenge that I am undertaking more times my fingers on my hands can count in a week, and I truly love every second of it.

I may not end up teaching full time in the future, but I can honestly say that it is definitely a defining moment of my life.

This past few weeks, I have also came to realise a problem that many students face today. Many students are sent for tuition by their parents, few of their own accord. Some might understand the need for it, but some may not.

And then you have students in academically weaker streams. Teaching some of them, i realise that alot of them are definitely in no way lacking in terms of mental ability and thinking capacity to their peers from academically better streams.

The point is, many of them just may not value the importance of education, of how they can help you in securing a better future, enough to work harder for it. This is not to say of course, that a lack of education condemns you to the dregs of society, education provides you with a better opportunity to succeed in leading a fulfilling life.

There will be the detractors, but one cannot deny that education is beneficial in so many ways.

If one day i were to give up teaching altogether, it will be if i have failed to make even one student come to realise this: that when you're going to school, you're not studying for anybody, you're studying for yourself, and your own future. And if that ever happens, i would have failed as a teacher, cause i believe that that is the most important value that teachers can impart to their students, not the subjects in they teach, but of the value and importance of education.

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If you're wondering what the photo at the top is, it was a picture taken a couple of years back, in my chemistry class in school (in question, the biggest face in the picture was actually a pose, he wasnt sleeping...). So funny how time flies, one moment i'm sitting there furiously absorbing all i can (most of the time, other times were spent in stupor) from the teacher, the next moment i am the one standing at the whiteboard, hoping to impart something mindblowing that will give my students their As.