一皿の豚耳 -- thoughts on chance happenings
Haven't been able to concentrate on work today, so I pretended I was working but was actually typing out a draft mail on Lotus Notes some random thoghts that have been floating on my mind lately -- thoughts about chance and fortuities.
It goes all the way back to 2001.
It all began with some pig's ear my friend Jack ate at a food stall on NTU campus one lazy afternoon in the fall --
#1. If Jack hadn't happened to be eating that pig's ear and Mike hadn't worn his Yale baseball cap on that day, they wouldn't have noticed each other and later become friends.
#2. If Jack and Mike hadn't become friends, I wouldn't have chosen Yale over Stanford for my graduate studies.
#3. If I hadn't gone to Yale, I wouldn't have decided to take the year-long program at IUC in Yokohama a year later after I got my master's.
#4. If I hadn't gone to IUC, I wouldn't have made so many Japanese friends and been invited to that summer rock festival in 2004.
#5. If I hadn't bought the ticket to that festival, I wouldn't have extended my stay till my visa expired, and persisted one more month on my shuukatsu (job hunting).
#6. If I hadn't persisted that one month, I wouldn't have gotten this position and work as a media planner in a skyscraper in Tokyo.
And now, I am sitting in my 20 sq. meter room, thinking : how did I get here? Jack would have never thought that pig's ear he ate had become THE pig's ear that changed my life forever. 4 years and 2 months later I am sitting in Tokyo blogging about an incident that was so trivial, so light, that nobody, no one except myself would remember.
All these events, coincidence, fortuitous happenings, so insignificant and yet so powerful, so light and carry so much weight, inevitably and quietly shaped our lives. "Chance and chance alone has a message for us," a quote I remembered from Milan Kundera's novel. "We read its message much as the gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup"
If everything happens by pure chance, why do I feel this weight on me all the time? Each step I take might make me a whole different person 4 years later. How do I choose? How do I know? Why do I feel as if I am constantly walking on a thin layer of ice, like the old Chinese idiom says- 如履薄冰?
And what's next? What message this time?
It goes all the way back to 2001.
It all began with some pig's ear my friend Jack ate at a food stall on NTU campus one lazy afternoon in the fall --
#1. If Jack hadn't happened to be eating that pig's ear and Mike hadn't worn his Yale baseball cap on that day, they wouldn't have noticed each other and later become friends.
#2. If Jack and Mike hadn't become friends, I wouldn't have chosen Yale over Stanford for my graduate studies.
#3. If I hadn't gone to Yale, I wouldn't have decided to take the year-long program at IUC in Yokohama a year later after I got my master's.
#4. If I hadn't gone to IUC, I wouldn't have made so many Japanese friends and been invited to that summer rock festival in 2004.
#5. If I hadn't bought the ticket to that festival, I wouldn't have extended my stay till my visa expired, and persisted one more month on my shuukatsu (job hunting).
#6. If I hadn't persisted that one month, I wouldn't have gotten this position and work as a media planner in a skyscraper in Tokyo.
And now, I am sitting in my 20 sq. meter room, thinking : how did I get here? Jack would have never thought that pig's ear he ate had become THE pig's ear that changed my life forever. 4 years and 2 months later I am sitting in Tokyo blogging about an incident that was so trivial, so light, that nobody, no one except myself would remember.
All these events, coincidence, fortuitous happenings, so insignificant and yet so powerful, so light and carry so much weight, inevitably and quietly shaped our lives. "Chance and chance alone has a message for us," a quote I remembered from Milan Kundera's novel. "We read its message much as the gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup"
If everything happens by pure chance, why do I feel this weight on me all the time? Each step I take might make me a whole different person 4 years later. How do I choose? How do I know? Why do I feel as if I am constantly walking on a thin layer of ice, like the old Chinese idiom says- 如履薄冰?
And what's next? What message this time?
posted by 雪人 at 1:52 AM
1 Comments:
...things don't happen by chance...it just takes a little push--a pig's ear to get this message across--and evrything has a purpose...the most important thing you should remember, "how" not "why". do not concern with yourself with emotions but look forward instead, with a heart that says, I can do this. Now, how am i going to make of this???
somewhere, sometime, "why" would be important, too but we will never know when insanity strikes and all we've left is a bunch of pig ears...
Good lUCk. God Bless u! Because He made all those things to happen.
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