The ethereal nature of Joy

Why do so many of us dream of striking it big(whether in terms of wealth or achievements), devote so much of our life, our efforts and even our sanity chasing it, only to find that the happiness bestowed by reaching that goal is so evasnescent,so fleeting, that we have to aim and reach for yet another goal, usually even more lofty, to sustain that joy?

What I notice about Olympic athletes who attain the ultimate prize(or prizes): they often try to reattain their former glory, even though realistically, that reality has bypassed them, not to mention that their mental aim has long become out-of-sync with their deteriorating physical prowess?

However, I do admire those amongst them who try anyway : Svetlana Khorkina, Steven Redgrave, Oksana Chusovitina(who incidentally won an Olympic silver medal in 2008 a full SIXTEEN YEARS after her Olympic gold with the Unified team in 1992!) and Al Oerter, amongst others.

But their attempts are just a function of the human mind's inability to properly weigh the pros and cons of such a venture, as it obsesses with achieving(or reachieving, I should say) the previous peak of happiness that has since long faded.

Some succeed, but they sacrifice much more in terms of pain and effort, with the risk of failure stacked ever higher against them the more they try.

That is not to say that one shouldn't keep trying : I did so,in the area of stock investing: achieving failure in 1994 and 1995, success in 1996, failure in 1997, hitting the pinnacle of my success in 1998-1999, failure in 2000, success in 2001, failure in 2002, success in 2003-2004,a mixed result in 2005, failure in 2006 and 2007,mixed results in 2008 and milder success in 2009.

But I would have come out much farther ahead had I:

1. Known when to stop and just sit without participating(something I'm practicing hard at in 2010)

2. Just bought and kept good companies' stocks without continuously chasing high risk-high return stocks for the sheer excitement.


The desire for the 'sheer excitement' in point 2. above is exactly what I believe humans in general seek endlessly in their lives, as it gives them joy ( or at least a semblance of it)

I can, of course, console myself that my own 'father' has been doing this,more like gambling than anything else, for over 45 of his 72 years of life currently, and has only a large negative result to show for it.


But I'm determined to thwart 'Like father like son' in my life by forcing myself to be patient and not invest impulsively. I was 21 when I started and am 15 years into it currently, with what I am sure is a better result, but still nothing to shout about!

My greatest era in the area of 'specuvesting' is still 1998-2000, when I teamed up with a partner to ride the wave of the Asian phoenix rising out of the ashes, supporting myself for 2 whole years without lifting a finger for anyone as an employee.


Now THAT was freedom and joy!

An Abyss called The Truth

Someone once wrote that 'When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you'.

I have been wondering these past several months about this elusive concept : Truth.

Accounting gimmicks attempt to dress shady books in alluring clothes. Sporting superstars try to hoodwink the adoring public even as they fornicate behind their families' backs.Salespeople and product pushers twist and bend the facts so much that their wares only remotely resemble what they paint them out to be.

Nowadays, it seems that only very young babies and animals are capable of communicating that most rare of commodities : the honest truth.

Even when they are found out and exposed, these lying entities then go all out to defend their lies,the affluent ones behind a wall of scheming, intriguing lawyers.

I often find myself in the same leaky boat that carries humanity along in the ocean of existence. Long inculcated with automatic guilt for telling even relatively harmless lies, I became resentful in my mid-30s when I chanced upon the lies that my parents fed me from years ago: to justify depriving me of a well-deserved holiday for a trip to the casino instead; to bluff me into believing that good grades were all I needed to succeed in life; to cover up the ugly facts about physical abuse in my childhood that probably contributed(together with years of aloof fatherhood)to my being gay.

But soon, I learnt to lie despite the guilt: denying my involvement in anything that I felt remotely guilty about; concealing an outing to visit a social escort in Sydney behind my family's back ; flatly denying that I was homosexual when asked point blank by my ex-godmother.

However, I was not always like this: I remember going against peer pressure(which included my elder brother's complicity) to run the full four rounds along the school perimeter while my other mates ran two but pretended to have run four; I recall handing over $10 that I found outside the school hostel office( even as my friend urged me to keep it) and handing it over to the Hall treasurer with a request to find out whose it was(On hindsight, I'm virtually certain he pocketed it-I would have too, at his age!).


The truth resides in an abyss: a hole so dark that many of us would not choose to confront it or look down its plunging shaft of our own volition. We merely throw inconvenient facts down that abyss every time we are compelled to deny them.

Sometimes, the cry of these discarded facts long abandoned and forgotten in that deep hole reaches up to us and we shudder.

Until today, I'm completely certain that my own parents would rather me dead than be forced to confront what they allowed to befall me many years ago.

That is the magnitude of the hold of fear that the abyss has on average people.

Recently, my 'father' suffered a mild stroke, but I merely shrugged my shoulders and said quietly to myself: 'That's life.'


Now, 18 months after I was forced to quit my teaching job of seven years and to overcome my depression and inferiority complex on my own, I start wondering if my own fear of confronting the abyss is dooming me to a life of a series of mediocre successes followed by larger failures.

The truths that I'm forcing myself to confront : that I am a difficult person, that I repel strangers with my brooding character, and my sexual inclinations, are such massive and overpowering influences that I almost give up trying to change them before I even start.

And yet, I remain mindful of them, and for the first two(forget the third one!) I can honestly say(really!) that I've chipped away at them slightly.



Many times however, I choose the easy way out and deceive myself that I am a fine fine person.

Hence, the sayings 'the brutal truth' and 'The truth hurts'.


Yet, I have continued to force myself to look into this abyss, but simultaneously try to release my anger at people who refuse to look down their own so that I can come to terms better with my own sordid truths.