Blessings

The passing of Valentine's Day for me was ironically laden with tension, sadness and instability. Yet, for me, I feel God has really blessed me today... through the aforementioned tension, sadness and instability He has shown me much mercy, as well as a sense of contentment throughout the mania of the day.

This is actually related to two major events that happened today, the first being the break from 9 am to 9.40 and the second being Dr. Ong's calling for all students except year 3s to go to the auditorium during Chinese period.

During the break, I spoke to a close friend who was really depressed - it was the first time I've seen him cry before. In any case most of the stuff is way too private to post here so I'll leave it at that.

What is the value of life? I've evaluated this question several times at various points in my life, and yet it's typically tough to come up with a good answer. I posted a couple of days back about Siddhartha and the cycle / spiral of life - are we really ascending in any way?

Personally, I know that committing suicide is a sin as it shows that one does not value the life God has given him - consequently, even in times when I feel like it is the easy way out, I will stop myself; no matter how hard things are at the moment, they're transient - the eternal suffering one will experience should one commit suicide is really much worse than any kind of transient suffering (if you know basic concepts of infinity in mathematics, infinity divided by a finite quantity is infinity).

The Student Council has branded this week as Agape Week - Agape generally refers to a kind of divine, unconditional love, much like the love God has for man. There are also other types of relationships we share with others that involve love. I can see quite a few - romantic love, friendship, storgic love (I recall this from CS Lewis' The Four Loves), familial love, love within a church or organization, et cetera. In many ways some of these are going to overlap.

I'm not experienced with many of the types of love mentioned above, so I'll be focusing on friendship really for today.

Aristotle divides friendship into three types, based on people's motives for forming them - friendship for utility, friendship for pleasure and friendship for "the good". It seems that most of our relationships are going to overlap the first two areas easily. For me, I find that quite a number of my "friendships" (I'd rather call them acquaintances) only hit the utility level - that is, they ask me for help in Maths, I check work and schedules with them, et cetera. Quite a number more hit the pleasure level - that is, I enjoy their company... yet, the relationship still seems rather superficial. By the time I hit Aristotle's definition of friendship for "the good", I can only say that I have a few of these friends. Supposedly, these friendships are those in which both friends enjoy each other's characters - that is, the motive behind the friendship is care for the friend, not anything else. These relationships can be (and usually are) tough to forge, but I find them really rewarding and satisfying compared to my other relationships.

There have been other dualities I've discussed with people before, but I guess there isn't really time for me to go through everything now.

you're such a blessing; such a joy in my life.
you may not know it. you probably think you unloaded stuff on me. but i really treasure it.
jk