Doing CRAZY things

What would life be if we do not have the COURAGE to attempt anything? -Vincent van Gogh

That quote that I saw on the bus home yesterday had me re-evaluating myself for quite awhile. Yes, I have been living an all too sedentary, boring life. Its always the same thing. Before army it was, go to school, listen(sleep) through lectures, talk cock with friends, go for an outing once a while, go home and play games, night sleep. Once in while I go library to get out some books to read. Now that I'm in army, I wouldn't say my life got any thing more interesting. Its now wasted on doing pointless stuff, but it definitely got me prioritizing my free book out time. The free time has to go to things that I enjoy doing, like playing computer games, doing some reading, catching with old friends and listen to their stories. I usually only have 48 hours to do whatever things I want do, and playing a satisfying good computer game, takes about 5 hours, doing a good spot of reading takes about another 3/4 hours. And then there's this TV show that I must watch on saturday and sunday, and it takes 2 hours. Add it the fact the going out with friends usually take off 6 to 7 hours of my day. Emo-ing and preparing to book in takes a further 2 hours off my time. Out of the computer gaming time, if I need to download stuff onto my PSP so that I can have something to do at night while in b.unk, I will need to spend around 5 hours trying to download games and movies. And I can't play games while downloading, because my games will lag. See the balancing act I've got to do?

Its all very boring to hear. But while in Orchard, I saw this group of people just being high, going crazy, and laughing, walking around waving to people, dressed in the most weirdly manner. And then amelia commented that at least a portion of Singapore is still like that. It got me observing at the moment that Singaporeans have come to forget 'What would life be, if we do not have the courage to attempt anything?' We have become a victim of our own success, that we are unwilling to try anything out of the ordinary. Its an evolutionary thing. Nature tends to repeat those things that lead to successful results, and cuts out those things that lead to nothing. If something leads to success, then we repeat the action over and over again. Its great for achieving the result of success. But what about achieving greater success? Nature uses the idea of mutation and randomness to do that. But random processes are slow, look, it took Nature several billions of years to achieve this kind of complexity in Life that we see today.

Once in a while we must do some CRAZY thing, out of the ordinary, something you would normally not do at all. We call this innovation, entrepreneurship, blah blah. Its part of a vibrant culture. Of course, the price of taking this risk, is the possibility of failure. Failure is not something to over react to. I don't get it at all. People are willing to take all the benefits, and unwilling to take any cost. They are even prepared to overlook the presence of the cost. So before the event of failure, they underestimate its probability. And after the event of failure, they overestimate its probability to occur. They implement all kinds of prohibitive red tapes to prevent this kind of failure from happening, overlooking the fact that another kind of failure will appear anyway. Look at the army training safety regulation, its a tome thick. Full of prohibitive red tape. But yet, it does not prevent accidents from appearing, because its completely fails to include every single kind of accident that can happen. Look at the summits that are held straight away after financial crisis. It does not seem to explain why we keep having these.. erm.. financial crisis after every few years. And failing exams are nothing. You took a risk of not studying that hard. You took a risk that the exam might be easy. You wanted to get that certificate. You wanted to land that course. Of course you must be prepared to accept failure. What if, the exam came out harder than expected? What if the question you tried to spot never appear? What if you tried to take the easy way and memorise everything?(I dunno if this is easier than understanding the concepts, I suppose it must be.)

The possibility of failure means that while there is a need to take a risk now and then, we can't take too much risk. So we can't play with fire too often, and hope that our fingers will become fire-resistant in the process. But once in a while we can play with the fire, and discover that it can do all sorts of things for us.

I've alot of things that I don't really want to do. But I've wanted to learn cool dancing. But its rather embarrassing for a noob like me to try learn dancing in the open. Like those Para Para dancers, or going to the CCA and say I want to join, but have no prior experience. Or that I wanted to do those pull-ups, but I'm kinda embarassed to train in full view of everyone. What's that noob doing there struggling on the bar? I'm lazy when it comes to physical training too. Need someone to push. OR suddenly break out into dance in the middle of Orchard road. Abit like Step Up. But the possibility that it would be embarrassing, its a bit too great. Or that I have always wanted to make a little this or that tool, experiment with this or that, but do not have the tools available, or that I suck absolutely at practical stuff, or that I'm afraid of wasting resources on something I suck? I've wanted to play good music on piano and electone too, but do not have the time to commit(its a really long ongoing kinda thing) and requires you pay alot of money, and the need to take exams, the pressure, well. I want to set up an online shop too, sell something(but what? I don't want to sell clothes, there are already people selling accessories..zz blah blah) or provide some service(but what again? Help people do homework? Nah, then what the point of homework? Help design webpages? There's already alot of people doing that. Besides if you try to sell a service, there's the possibility of someone providing the service for free and your little shop would be epic failure.) I suppose it would be fun to learn to some erm.. kungfu, but again all this physical training, I'm lazy and need someone to push. I want to learn drawing, especially cartoon drawing. I used to be able to draw very well when I was very young, I attended art classes. But somehow, when my science part kicked in, my art ability became poorer and poorer. OH wells. All these is the Don't move my cheese mentality at work.

All these things require a time period to see results. Not even guaranteed to have positive results. Busy people definitely have well-spent time. For this, I kinda salute to xavier, for you and the rest of the canoeing team have shown the greatest art of spending time wisely. In scarcity, we find wealth and diversity.

What have you always wanted to do, but somehow never got around to doing it?