Winnie Lim

Our current minister of defence had made a public speech last week, stating that the US’s image has “changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent.” Considering that Singapore has traditionally tried to stay as politically neutral and ambiguous as possible, it feels like some tide has turned. This is on top of Elon Musk showing up with a chainsaw wearing a thick gold chain, Trump’s various executive orders, bird flu flying rampant, more weird coronavirus appearing, flu deaths in the US are now outpacing covid deaths, etc…

During the Obama years it felt like the world was on the cusp of great positive change – we were finally going to become people who are willing to care for other people, but in a short decade or so it feels like we’re now heading for civilisation collapse.

Human beings have always not been good at long-term thinking. We tend to prioritise short-term survival. Evolutionarily speaking, this makes sense. It is difficult to think about the future when we are coping with existential threats on a daily basis. But now our brains are still reacting as though we live in primal times. It is made a lot worse by mobile phones and social media as they have dramatically shortened our attention span and artificially increased our sense of threat (this internet stranger is attacking me). We need our attention span for many critical functions in life, including our capacity to think long term.

At this current rate, how likely it is for people to come together to do enough to reverse climate change, and to stop viruses from permanently damaging our health? First of all we would need people to be aware that there are these pressing issues, but the common response is denial. I actually understand this response too, things are so overwhelming that we have to be in denial in order to just survive our day to day existence. I too, wish to be in denial if it is cognitively possible.

Perhaps to seasoned buddhists, this is just like any day in existence. To them life is impermanent anyway, it makes no difference if we die in pandemics or wars, or if we die in our sleep. Even in the safest world possible, it doesn’t change the fact that life is impermanent.

As someone who was born in the 1980s in Singapore, it can feel like the world has suddenly turned hostile. But the reality is the world has always been hostile, and it is still very hostile in many parts of the world. These days, I keep reminding myself that we are not entitled to peace, safety or even justice. These were things that were brutally fought for. So the natural conditions of life means that it has always been precarious. I was just under the temporary illusion that the world was a safe and progressive place.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how I wish to live in this precarious world. I have no answers yet. All I know is how I don’t wish to live. I don’t wish to take anything for granted, so even if it means I live with a ton of added existential anxiety because I have to bear the reality of impermanence – that at any given time, anything can end – I am trying to co-exist with it. Who knew that our lives would permanently change in 2020? But again coming back to a mindset of a buddhist, my life could permanently change even without the existence of life-threatening viruses.

How would I like to live before my life as I know it ends? What truly infuses a sense that I have truly lived? It is very easy to become hedonistic in a world like this. But will that hedonism ultimately make me feel like I have lived? Does it matter how I feel about my existence anyway? Is the attempt to make a life well-lived rooted in some capitalistic value that everything must have value?

I like reading about the life of monastics and hermits, since they are mostly living a life that is contrary to the average human being. It just serves as a good reminder of how different human beings can be – it is easy to assume we are all the same and we want similar things – and how radically different people can live. It stretches my imagination of how I can think about my self and my life.

Last week I read about the 14th Dalai Lama: they have to spend a set amount of time meditating every day, what was surprising was that even as they receive visitors they are still practicing in their minds in order to fulfil their daily requirement.

I find it fascinating that many monastics spend hours of their lives practicing so that they can be awake the rest of the time, even as they reach their 80s or 90s they are still practicing. For some of them it is not just about meditating for themselves, their belief systems take other lifetimes into account, or that their practice can benefit other sentient beings. Regardless, it is provoking to me that for many of us it is about creating, creating, creating (yes I am guilty), whereas some people out there spend their entire lives doing “nothing” so that they can transform their minds.

As a self-identifying creative person, it is very difficult to escape the mindset that if I’m not creating I am not living. But I forget that when I invest time into mundane tasks and relationships, I am essentially creating myself too. Right now I feel like there is this experience of living, and I am not in it. I am trying to live according to my idea of what living should be, but I am not directly experiencing life. I am still living too much in my mind.

I feel like I am finally beginning to accept that the world has changed, and I have to adjust myself to living in this new reality. I no longer have aspirations. I just want to cultivate my psyche so that in difficult times I can have less psychological suffering on top of the actual physical suffering.

I am not optimistic about the future, as it stands I don’t think it is realistic to expect the system to change, and since the system wouldn’t change the people wouldn’t change either. At our core we are just mortal creatures terrified of losing what we have. If we don’t overcome our innate insecurity, we will keep on being violent people. There is no other outcome because how do you overcome a terrified brain? Every one of us has experienced some form of terror before. We can’t talk and teach that terror away. We have to change our selves fundamentally, to believe in a totally different world. That is a tall task for creatures that have been fighting for their survival since the beginning of time. We have been conditioned to kill, whether literally or metaphorically, to protect what is ours.

So the question remains, how do we exist meaningfully in an unsafe world? I guess some of us will find out the answer as this unfolds. Maybe many of us wouldn’t have the luxury of thinking about meaning and having a fulfilled existence. But until I lose that freedom I will continue to seek out various textures of richness and depth that is available in this existence. I think in any existence the only thing that truly survives, is who we had been.

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