Fragility and The Quest For Speed

I've been sporting this msn nick for sometime already now with the intention of reminding myself to blog about it....a phrase that has, one word that's rather thoughtful and maybe even profound i might say, and another one holding not much of a meaning because i erm... erm.... like contrasts and playing with words to make unmeaningful phrases.

Ok, let's begin with the word fragility. I just realised how fragile we are, our lives, our very beings, everything that we have and own. Take our lives for instance. A moment its like this, and another moment its like that. While some of us maybe argue we're fine and all, you know like typically, "Aiyah don't worry one-lah, sure can one. So small matter scared for what?" ( for any non-malaysian readers that's english btw, victorian style) kind of thoughts that invade our minds, thinking we're invincible ,albeit subconciously, in our ignorance of eveything happening around us.

Take your confidence for example. It's fragile. Like a flowerpot . Drop it but a little and it might stand. Drop it a little harder and it cracks. Apply the right blow and it completely shatters. And what happens of the soil inside it holds? It leaks out. Not immediately, but it does. Like us. Without our confidence things that used to be routine for us just get impossible. Like survival for that flower in the broken flowerpot.

Or another more infamous incident, the bombings in London. Imagine some typical working guy, probably waking up that morning, dreading the morning rush hour at King's Cross, or a young lady excitedly climbing up bus No 30 to begin her first day at work, an alcohol consuming cigarrette puffing sexoholic party guy who woke up thinking about that encounter with that lady in the bar night before and looking foward to meeting her again that same night(no intention of patronizing here, just making a variety of characters), or the God fearing man who woke up that morning and took the tube to get to a friend who was facing troubles and needed someone to talk to. Individuals who once were alive are no longer bacause some severely misguided (and probably manipulated) people thought that by killing people they'd be doing God a favour. So fragile. Everyone of us.

And reading Thomas A` Kempis' The Imitation of Christ which prompted all this thinking in the 1st place, says "Oh, how great is human frailty, which is always prone to evil! Today you confess your sins, and tomorrow you commit the very same sins you have confessed today. Now you purpose to take heed, and after an hour you behave such as though you had never had any such purpose at all."

And how true were Mr. Kempis' comments. Our very beings are frail. But a fitting conclusion to this bleakness was indeed the following sentence of his words, "Therefore we have good cause to humble ourselves and never to have any great conceit of ourselves, since we are so frail and inconstant. "

Maybe we need to live like there is no tomorrow, no, not like going out partying and all that, rather to actually do some good and help that old lady living across the street. Or encouraging a friend who feels down. Or serve instead of being served.

Just maybe.