A friend (female, single, solicitor-cum-entrepreneur, mid-30s), asked me over Saturday tea and sandwiches something like,

 "Would it have been easier to be happy if I'd chosen a normal life?"

Though a fairly simple question, it's loaded with assumptions:

1. That we have an unchangeable 'true' nature.
   This is a common theme in myth and religion, and evidenced by ourselves not being infinitely flexible. We are not chameleons.
2. That our unchangeable nature is common across humanity.
   This is a tempting assumption as we share many physical and non-physical needs in common with others.
3. That happiness and fulfillment come from following our true nature.
4. Following our true nature comes ... naturally.

At the beginning it looked like my friend's chips were down. Of course it would have been easier. She'd been picky and difficult all through her 20s, and was now single and childless as a result. Image: alternate her holding 2 never-realised children, saying, "Serves you right." As the talk progressed, however, we found ourselves discovering a few other ideas:

• It is not actually easy to be 'normal'. People are quite driven to fit into the aspirational demographic. Some adopt irrational methods, including getting (others) pregnant to acquire a family, making consumer purchases or investments to seemingly do nothing more than generate suitable conversation stories.
• If it was easier to do it, she would have done it already. But no, there was something, given her foresight, intelligence, and savvy that barred the suburban path, making it unnatural for her.
• People with enough smarts and independence of thought make abnormal choices not because we are being ornery, but because we have the ability to follow them through.
• Our abnormal choices are part of our true natures.

Now apply the previous assumptions to reach a startling conclusion...

The majority is not following their true nature. The happy families with their flatscreens, baby car seats, and their Wiggles DVDs are not being fulfilled at all. But they're too dumb to know, or do anything about it.

Anyways, You go, girl.

How reprehensible the man
Who, when death’s crew enters the room,
Stands firmly up before they can
Take hold, and, dignified though wan,
Walks with raised chin towards his doom.

How pitiful the creature who
Gulps frail yet resolute goodbyes
To all and sundry that he knew,
Being so brave as to hide from view
The reddened nose and teary eyes.

How abject he who shifts to faith
All the responsibility,
And smiling palely, waits for death,
With no drive to prolong his breath:
It’s His will – what will be, will be.

The heart that muscled through the years;
The eyes that marked the coloured time;
The mind’s daily-expanding spheres:
Betrayed by wrathless, placid tears
Of vile acceptance of this crime.

No – futile though the battle is,
No one was born to feed the soil;
We all may stand by the abyss,
But though the darkness will not miss,
It cannot force a single smile.

So when the rope loops round the neck,
Embrace it not as destined fate,
Or whisper gently, ‘make it quick’;
But writhe and curse and glare and kick
With all your life, with all your hate.

by Khor Kuan Min

"Rage, rage, against the dying of the light."  Only with more irony and contempt. Dylan Thomas better grow some balls because he's just been served. Love it.

My love is not boundless,
(As some men profess theirs
to be,) like the infinite sea.
It's easily charted,
Circumnavigated,
And kept under close watch of me.

My love is not deep,
Like REM sleep,
With room for whimsy and play.
It's shallow and squalid,
With dream lurkers horrid,
That'll bite you if you turn away.

My love is not clean,
Like a fresh mountain stream.
It is muddy, complex, and impure.
Yet so strong and so rich
That when it hits your lips,
Be it bitter, you will surely want more.

Once pristine and unbounded,
'Twas on lovers squandered,
Who drank without thought to quench me.
Thus my love is rare,
Scarce without compare,
And this cupful I give to thee.

Whenever things go balls-up wrong, someone trots out the above pearl of wisdom. The assertion is that we can all 'learn' something, with the implication that blame is shared. If you weren't at fault then you wouldn't have anything to learn. You have something to learn, therefore you are partly to blame. Fault and loss of face is distributed.

But this quick distribution of blame is not always accurate. Blame is not always able to be shared. It often lies fairly and squarely on a single person's lack of preparation, poor execution, or conflicting goals. Furthermore, it is unfair for everyone else to cop the guilty party's share of self punishment.

For example, send your kids on a camp with inadequate equipment. They catch a cold. The children have learned to be tougher.

You don't want to stop too often on the freeway. As a consequence, you run out of petrol. Everyone else in the car can learn not to distract the driver.

It is often a race to declare tragedies of error to be 'learning experiences' because from that point on any learning that impugns the declarer's competence appears paradoxical. "You learned a lesson," "Yes, I learned you were wrong." Just doesn't work. The person who first calls the bollocking a 'learning experience' thus protects themselves from censure.

To resolve this, recognise the motive for calling something a 'learning experience'. You may then accept that you did learn a lesson, just not the one that they wanted you to learn.

This chestnut comes from my father. He would often use it to stop us kids from making excuses for failures, and to encourage us to take responsibility. People who spout this cliche often want to deflect blame away from their direction. Unfortunately, it overshoots the mark and can be damaging to people who have a tendency towards self blame.

The problem with the quote is that failure is often caused by a myriad of factors, rather than just one constant fault. To continue the trade analogy, the weather may have been unsuitable, or the materials defective. The tools may in fact have been inadequate.

Taking personal responsibility for failure is not always appropriate and can mask the real cause of failure. The truth in the proverb comes from the tendency for the 'poor workman' to continuously blame one thing - be it his tools or whatever - without taking time to find out the real cause. A workman who continuously blames himself is also a poor workman, and one who will have a very short career before the weight of all the blame causes him to quit.

A good workman will not be afraid of blaming his tools. A good workman will find where the blame really lies rather than placing default blame on himself. A superlative workman will have no fear of exposing the fault.

"Think about it" means "I want you to think that:" means "I want to believe that:"

"... you don't have to go through the pain that you did learning through your previous experiences. I think there's easier and better ways out there. Life should be more enjoyable than just slogging away. So think about it, dig deep, don't be stubborn, be open, and enjoy yourself."

Being dissed like that hurts. Yes, it is a gloating underhanded diss. Translation of the above:

"You were wrong. You chose the hard way. You didn't listen. You were too 'stubborn' to change."

Well, I hope you're proven horribly wrong, you smug yuppie cosckucker. I hope your 'easier and better way' leads you to spend years in the wilderness with no option but to do the slogging that you try so hard to deny. I'll be there to tell you that you should be more 'open'.

"Or do ye think that ye shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed away before you?" Koran 2:214

People who tell you you're living in the past invariably want you to forget something they did to you.

As temporal beings we have 3 possible foci:

1. To dwell on resolving past events, putting present and future on hold;
2. To avoid both past and future and concentrate on producing the most pleasurable present;
3. To simplify past and present to maximise future returns.

Living in the present is considered enlightened. Living for the future is considered diligent. But living in the past is almost considered a mental illness. Why? When it is the only choice that does not require any self-deception.

Whether you approach your path through reflection, therapy, or physical revenge, you come closer to resolving it. However, it inconveniences people who have a vested interest in your past. And so they throw you chestnuts like 'let go', or 'forgive and forget'.

If Joseph 'forgave and forgot' then his 12 backstabbing brothers would not have learned a valuable lesson. Likewise, Job would not have forced God to show his hand had he simply accepted his friends' interpretation of his past misfortune.

Living in your past is only bad for the other people living there.

Thanks, Mum.

3 February 1992: the day my world came to an end. Life was tough enough for an overweight, Asian geek but it was about to get a lot worse; I received the call from Melbourne telling me that my grandfather had died in his sleep. I may have been young but I wasn't stupid. I could see the writing on the wall. My parents had already separated. Without the presence of the family patriarch, they would not be forced to maintain the image of unity. They would be free to indulge in their life re-engineering projects, notwithstanding their two dependents. Us kids would just have to shut up and put up.

Want to move in with someone else but come back every two days for a free meal? Go ahead. If the kids complain, tell them that they've been turned against you.

Want to renovate the house? Get the kids to help. If they don't, accuse them of siding for the ex.

Want to take them on a poxy holiday but they told you 'no'? Tell them they're being manipulative.

They're unhappy because they're selfish and ungrateful, not because they're only getting half a parenthood, half a childhood, half of half of what you got.

Other kids rave about their parents' divorce. They tell you that they get 2 sets of gifts. That's true, but the rub is that you get 2 sets of crap gifts, because: "Mum/Dad can't possibly afford what you want. (Why are you being so unreasonable? Dad/Mum told you to complain, did they?)"

I knew it would get bad when he died, but I didn't know it would get that bad.

I visit his plaque at the Springvale Necropolis 16 years later. Staying with Yuriko in Clayton, I chance upon how close it was while looking in the Melways for suburbs to visit. Springvale, Box Hill, Doncaster, Dandenong. Turns out that I have an intimate albeit unwanted knowledge of Melbourne's far eastern suburbs generated from years of spending my school holidays being dragged from place to place searching for the latest stupid restaurant to go to after church.

Do I regret spending time with my grandparents? No. My grandparents were the epitome of old-world dignity that I have only recently re-discovered an aspiration for. Do I regret going to Melbourne? Yes, Doncaster is the middle of nowhere with no transport except rides from adults who aren't going to take you anywhere interesting anyway. We should have flown his ass down instead of driving all the way up just to show how filial we were.

Chinese Pentecostals don't enshrine their dead like their Buddhist counterparts do. The Church of Christ sees death as a celebration. "Rejoice! He's gone to live happy and whole with God." We gave him a rousing  musical send-off and that was it. My family washed their hands so cleanly of him that they don't even know where he is. Most cultures see holding on to the past as a bad thing but severing the ancestral links causes the Confucian hierarchy to collapse. The past is what gives us identity and structure; perhaps the very thing my parents were trying to escape.

3rd February 1992: I am too busy bracing myself for the excruciating end of the world. 24th August 2008: I cry my freaking eyes out.

(With apologies to Messrs Snoop and Pharell)

To the players getting margin calls:
Suffer in your jocks, suffer in your jocks, suffer in your jocks.

When your credit cards done hit the wall:
Gotta pawn your rocks, sell off all your stocks, buy from Reject Shop.

If your bank got you by the balls:
Get ready to be mocked, ready to be mocked, ready to be mocked.

'Cause you said you'd make a load,
Now you gotta sell your home,
And I'm the one that ownz,
'Cause I paid off all my loans.

Now throw those gang signs up. Or maybe 'For Sale' signs. Mwa ha ha.

"They're just in it for the money."

With those words, Marc snapped me out of my 'why the hell didn't I subdivide and develop' stupor.

When you build upon a property, you have the opportunity to make an individual thing of beauty. Sandstone. Limestone. Ceiling roses on high ceilings. Stately, not necessarily large, but still grand. Look around the up-and-coming suburbs and all you'll see are neo-tuscan rendered trash-pieces, more like angular trailers than houses.

This generation of would-be property tycoons are failing miserably to fashion homes of substance. Keep the costs low and the margin high. God forbid you over-capitalise. Begs the question why they're developing if they're so worried about margin in the first place. They probably don't think about that in the crass rush against other middle-class to feed off the middle class.

Now I know why I didn't subdivide and develop like the other go-getters out there; because I would have exchanged one sturdy edifice on a full estate for half a community title', and two 'homettes' - less 'built' than 'extruded' - all so that I could feign despair over merlot and pud thai how much capital gains tax I was paying this financial year.

I am so glad that I chose the path I consider less contemptible. Denying I had sold a vision of independence for off-the-plan box homes and pieces of silver would have killed me.

If you can read this and you don't know what bourgeois means, it means you.

"With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life."

I've been told to read (and re-read) the spiritual self- help libre-du-jour, The Four Agreements, by my close circle of meddling concerned.

As if I would shell out physical money for metaphysical value. Besides, if it really is ancient Toltec wisdom, magically expressed in folksy medicine-man English, then its copyright has probably expired and it should be free. Unfortunately I could not manifest the destiny of a free book. Or maybe I did; thanks Zac for the near-permanent loan.

Author Miguel Ruiz: surgeon, car-accident victim, shaman bearer of universal truth seems genuine enough in this publication, notwithstanding the heavy doses of Joseph Campbell in his autobiographical first chapters.

Man, I hope them shamans don't know any curses, because I'm about to give some spoilers.

Agreement One - Be Impeccable with your Word

Let's see. I'm always worried about saying the wrong time. And my parents told me children should be seen and not heard. Many a time I've saved the day by saying the right thing at the right time and by shutting up when it would not have gotten me anywhere. So it's safe to say I've mastered this agreement. Impeccable word: check!

Agreement Two - Don't take things personally

• "Aren't you taking this criticism too personally? Don't be so defensive."
• "Aren't you taking this downsizing a little personally?"
• "Aren't you taking me screwing your wife a little too personally?"

Bugger not taking things personally. If you force yourself not to take things personally then you'll never care about anything enough to make a change. Okay, fail. Next!

Agreement Three - Don't Assume

Don't use your gut instinct. Don't use your intuition. Don't use your experience. You'll only be acting out of fear. Open your mind and keep doubting yourself until you've drowned out that little voice inside you that refuses to stay silent. Don't assume because assumptions are bad, mmm-kay? Next!

Agreement Four - Try your Best

Trying your best is the excuse of those who fail. Effort means absolutely nothing. History books overwhelmingly chronicle those who succeeded over those who merely tried. Trying your best won't get you that scholarship, internship, bonus, or promotion. Being better than everyone else will.

Finished! Four Agreements in Four Minutes! A new Olympic record.

Flippancy aside, the Four Agreements is a sincere attempt to present the concept of personal integrity in an easygoing, digestible manner. However, it is written in such simplistic language as to leave it vulnerable to mis-interpretation. Although the Four Agreements sound sweet and simple, in reality they are maddeningly difficult. This critical difficulty cannot be expressed in Ruiz's sing-song whimsical style, and is therefore quite misleadingly not expressed at all.

The directory is out of date and you can never find the shop you want. Even if you do find the shop you want, it won't have what you want. Or it will be too expensive, or it won't come in blue.

The sales-person will usually be someone young and pretty with spiked up hair and at least one piercing, or some crusty old fart who hates their life. Regardless, they shop in the same mall they serve. They are just like you, and they know it. So they have no problem telling you that what you were looking for was discontinued, or they can order it in but no guarantees as to when it will get there. Besides, why did you want that, anyway? It's so last season. If you really want value for money ...

So you shamble from store to store, buying a heap of crap in an attempt to displace the memory of your true desire. Ultimately this makes you doubly unhappy, from the crushing dissatisfaction as well as the revulsion of your compromise.

But what else can you do? If you go to a mall and choose not to shop, people look at you funny. Even the lumberjack-shirted, ugg-boot wearing, pram-pushing middle-class wanna-bes will think you're a retard. Why are you denying yourself? Ýou're such a miser. Money's only good for one thing, you can't take it with you. You can't always get what you want. Don't be so fussy. Don't be so critical. You're not making the most of your experience.

But let's face it, until now your experience has been nothing but struggle. Struggle to drive there, struggle to find a  park. Struggle to walk in, find an (out-of-date) directory or a concierge desk that's manned. To top it off, the struggle to accept that while everyone else seems to be content with what they have, i.e. PVC bags full of consumer dross, you find the thought bitterly shameful. If you leave empty-handed now, without even a smoothie or a handy hint on re-lining your jacket from one of the sales staff, then it will all seem like a total waste.

The real waste is staying there one second longer than you have to. The struggle of coming, the struggle of going; both are fixed costs and cannot be ameliorated by the piles of junk we pile into our trunks. Leaving after finding our desires frustrated is valid, and that revelation is the nearest to heaven we get; until we realise that our only other choices are more shopping malls.

Unconditional love is not all it's cracked up to be.

Because it relies on no external stimuli, unconditional love is also unpredictable love. It has no rationale for beginning and therefore needs no reason to end. Conditional love on the other hand, will by definition persist as long as the condition persists.

Someone who loves you for no reason other than who you are'' can also stop loving you for no reason at all. Whereas someone who loves you for something definite like your bling/booty will do so as long as you retain those qualities.

Unconditional love is widely regarded as the 'higher love' but its unfettered nature lends it an uncomfortable unpredictability. We have all had lovers who, loving us unconditionally one day, would feel justified in ditching us the next, having found no distinct qualities of ours to bind their infatuation to. We may even have loved and dumped unconditionally ourselves. God allegedly loves us unconditionally, but he occasionally - and without adequate warning - turns off the affection tap long enough to send along an earthquake, a bloodthirsty totalitarian regime, or a personal disaster despite our best efforts to appease him through prayer, piety, or human sacrifice.

With that in mind, a contractually-flavoured, conditional love may be more attractive, if only because we can be certain in how to maintain it.

Unconditional love does not imply eternal love.

"What has been done will be done ... there is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

The vocational world seems to have exploded into millions of possibilities. Simple occupations - plumber, builder, priest - are drowned out by the ocean of new choices.

Not so.

Even the most elongated job titles can be reduced to a single word of at most three syllables. Try this. It lends clarity and perspective.

Next time you find yourself awestruck by a 'regional account manager', remember that he or she is in truth a 'salesman'. And the 'maintenance technician' you belittle is following the line of 'stewards'.

So, what do you do?

They said it couldn't be done.

Actually, they didn't. 'They' could not imagine why I would want to:

1. Buy a old-style ball-foot bathtub. ($100 including delivery);
2. Put it on bricks in my garden (out of sight of the housemates);
3. Hook it up with a multitude of hose connectors to the (solar) hot water system;
4. Whack in a giant tube of polydrain to water my plants with the outflow.

The benefits are self-evident. Starry nights lying in my own personal hot spring (露天風呂) with a cool glass of alcoholic beverage to keep the toxins flowing as I steam my tension away.

Screw water restrictions. Ladies and gentlemen, I present "ウィーの湯" (pronounced 'Wee-no-yu').

Final thought: it fits two. Aww Yeeah.

Easy for you to say, motherf*cker.

What if the 'now' is completely screwed up? What if your present is where the proverbial doo-doo hits the fan and you are impotent to rescue it? What if, for example, the present is filled with your parents' divorce, being ignored by your classmates/colleagues, or your body in constant pain?

Why should you make the most out of a now that sucks like a Dyson? Should you be condemned for longing for the past or attempting to picture a brighter future? Apparently so, according to hard-core new-agers who simplistically urge you to live in the present.

'Living' implies submission to the course of events that shaped a present contrary to your wishes. You need not submit to something ambivalent to your wishes, indeed your existence. You need not accept your Dad's new girlfriend or the company restructure. With your eye on the future and your hand on your cudgel you can bludgeon your present into a future worth living in.

I refuse to live in a present that sucks.