Winnie Lim

I am not sure why, but I don’t have much interest in life. I have been this way for as long as I can remember, though I am not sure if my memories are reliable. People seem to find living fun, I find it somewhat painful and difficult to endure. It doesn’t help that this world is not very sane or kind. There are definitely pockets of kindness, but in general the way society is structured is unkind. 

I think that if someone wants to be somewhat happy, there needs to be enough forgetting, enough denial, enough ignorance. Unless the person is emotionally resilient enough to stare at reality in the face, do what they think is their moral responsibility despite living in an uncooperative society, and fully feel all the pain and joy that comes with existence. Perhaps it is enough if they are able to construct a narrative that gives them meaning and rationalises the suffering that goes on in the world. 

I am not that person. I may even admit I am a coward. I don’t like witnessing suffering, neither do I like to suffer myself. I think that life is brutal. I feel like I cannot opt out of this nonsense, so I try to trick myself into having some interest in my own life. 

I think without that interest I may lose the will to live. I may not end my life because I think that is cruel to the people who truly care about me no matter how few and far in between. But I may psychologically give up and waste my existence away. I have gone through periods like this but they are not permanent. I don’t wish to bring suffering to people like my partner, so I try, and try again. 

So I try to pretend to be interested in some things. It is like playing a role-playing game, if immersed enough I may forget that I am actually pretending. I work on my art, I work on my fitness, and I write these posts. I don’t actually feel much about them, I just go through the motions because I am not sure what is the alternative. I do get pleasantly surprised at the outcomes at times. For example, I like experiencing my aerobic fitness. I got into exercising out of necessity, yet it allowed me to experience a different version of myself. 

I feel like that is the crux for me. Since I am generally uninterested in the world, perhaps the only thing that can get me interested in living is to be curious about my future self. Human beings are both canvases and instruments. The different choices we make will generate different patterns, textures and colours, like on a canvas. Will it be colourful or dull? Will it be uniform or wild? We can hone our selves like an instrument. What we gather in our selves in the form of inputs, experiences, lessons, will ultimately affect the continuous creation of our canvas. The selves we become impact the lives we lead, through what we experience in our lives, we are also creating our selves. 

I think it is a very interesting idea to think of our selves as an instrument and a canvas. Society conditions us to sacrifice our selves for the greater good, aim to be the same as everyone else in order to conform, or stand out by succeeding through prescribed ways. We could have a so-called very successful life by getting great grades, have a society-approved career, get married to a spouse who seems to be an equal on paper, and have children capable of emulating our own “success”. 

That is a success to most people, when we die perhaps people will talk of us with great reverence. But is that the canvas we want to create? Are our selves merely capable of checking the societal-generated milestones? What are we truly capable of? If we spend our lives devoted to just passing these “standard” tests that society offers, we will never know who we can become. 

For me, it has been a difficult but interesting 8 years since I left my last full-time job because I developed chronic health issues. I have to be really honest and acknowledge that I would be probably pursuing the so-called society-approved goals like everyone else if I didn’t suffer from my illnesses. I am not celebrating my illnesses or saying that they are a blessing in disguise – I really resent that sort of narrative because the suffering is very real and debilitating. But they gave me no choice except to have a hard reset on the way I live life.

I stand corrected. I could have perhaps continued to lead the life I led and grind through the pain with painkillers or something. I wonder a lot about free will. Was my psyche and personality only capable of making the choices I have made so far? Is there an alternate version of me who would have chosen to stay where ever I was?

I guess another contradiction that I am is that I can be a hopeful person. I mean, why harbour hope when I am chronically suicidal? But maybe I am chronically suicidal because I am hopeful. They say in many cases it is not that people want to literally die, they just want their suffering to end and their ego to die (or the existence they feel trapped or hopeless in). For me, the idea that I wish to end my life is potentially a hopeful situation. Sometimes the willingness to put hard stop to something can be liberating. There were countless times in my life when I made certain choices because I was like this wouldn’t be worse than dying. I was already psychologically prepared to die, so I wasn’t afraid of much else. 

Being willing to die means I am willing to give up whatever that I had in that life. That made it “easier” for me to make dramatic changes because since I was as good as dead, I could start my life in a totally different direction. Plenty of times we are afraid to make certain decisions because of potential judgement, embarrassment, the loss of “face” as we chinese like to call it. But for me the loss of “face” is nothing compared to wanting to die. It makes it way easier to live life like a loser in society’s eyes. 

There is a lot of internal judgement too. Till today I have to entertain feelings of uselessness and a diminished sense of self because I am an useless “loser” by society standards. But it is possible to develop the intellectual and psychological strength to know what is it that we truly want out of our lives and our selves – even though I seem like the same person I know I am stronger compared to my past selves because I review my journals. Is getting the stamp of approval from society so important that we are willing to mute and kill our true inner selves? We can be outwardly successful in every way but feel dead inside. Is that what we wish to endure till the very end?

I think everyone should make their choices and it is a valid choice to pursue outward success. I believe that some people do enjoy owning a business or being a lawyer – that is how they express their personality and creativity. But the choice has to be made out of awareness and clarity. Do something because we really wish to, because we want our canvases to turn out that way, not because we are afraid. 

It is not easy to know what we want, because we have been socially programmed since we are conscious. I am not sure if this is a worthwhile journey to take, because it can invite a lifetime of potential suffering and loneliness to live a life that is not conventionally standard. Perhaps it is easier to live like everyone else instead of sticking out like a sore thumb. Even people closest to us may be silently judging us. Maybe it is not everyone’s cup of tea to live closer to their inner truth, if such a truth even exists. 

I don’t believe in an inherent purpose so it is not about finding one’s true purpose and living according to that. I see my life more as a canvas, so what I’m interested in is to push it in certain directions and see where it will take me. I cannot be sure if there is a “true” self underneath all those layers that I am, but at least there is a self willing to search and experiment versus a self who is wholly created by societal’s expectations and conditioning. 

Maybe this is not an interesting idea to some people, but it is to me. I see it as a saving grace for my self who has no interest in everything else. Who will I be in another 8 years? Will I finally be interested enough to live life, or will I always be this detached person? Sometimes it feels like I will always be this way because it feels to me I have always been this way. But it has only been 8 years since I’ve started to actually live life on my own terms. I could say I am 8 years old, because my previous self has died. 

I think I have not developed enough psychological skills to cope with life, and I have the emotional maturity of an 8 year old, and that’s already being pretty kind to my self. I am not sure if I can be psychologically more resilient. Life at this point still feels daunting and horrifying to me. But since it is not something I can unsubscribe from, the only choice left to me is to continue honing myself and be curious about creating that canvas.

Learning to make actual art has taught me a lot in the process. There are artists who know precisely where they want to go, and they spend their lives honing themselves in order to make art with that very precise skill and direction. I am the sort of artist that has no idea where I want to go, but I am willing to continue to try different things and be surprised at the outcomes they bring me. My life, like my art is not aesthetically pleasing, but it pleases me because I know I am the only person capable of filling up this canvas in this manner. It is not because I am more special than anyone else, but rather I respect and am aware of the complex uniqueness of any individual’s psyche. I can never walk in your shoes because our makeup and experiences will always be different. Isn’t it a beautiful thing to express that essence that is you and uniquely you? 

I find it comforting that I still find this beautiful. That I can continue to iterate on my self like a piece of software, that I am never truly fixed and stuck no matter how it actually feels. What new interests can I pick up tomorrow? I like the idea that I can stop doing something I’ve been doing all my life right at this moment, and start doing something I’ve never ever done before. I don’t have to live up to some ingrained belief I have about myself, I don’t have to become a specific person, I can just keep on painting the canvas, adding more and more layers. It doesn’t have to be beautiful, great or appreciated by people, it just needs to be mine.

note: I could probably write a better essay about the concept of our selves being a canvas without having to mention my chronic suicidal tendencies and lack of interest in life. But I think it is my lack of interest that has led me to think in this direction. There are a lot of things I could probably do better objectively, but it wouldn’t be me. I am just this longwinded, and everything I write stems from this psychological core I have of being perpetually lonely, sad and uninterested. It is something I have to continually learn to accept instead of disowning because I thought I could be “better”.

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