Bad Apples

Much ado about nothing :

Singapore's best choice for the much-coveted crown of Miss Singapore World apparently goes, quite simply, to the best-looking contestant. (bad run this year, hey)

Nevermind if she turns out to have kleptomaniac tendancies and an almost-criminal-conviction for fraud waived for the "fact" that she's schizophrenic to boot.

Aside from the unspoken but obvious point that Sandra Bullock made a lifetime ago ("...world peace?") that International Beauty Queens are as much about an idea as an appearance... about quasi-diplomacy and representation on a world-stage of... many things... about choosing someone with that something extra special from a crowd of incredibly beautiful women, well.

Ris Low isn't exactly beautiful. Perhaps good-looking at best (though not to my eye).
Nor does she possess a heart of gold (it takes an even measure of self-centredness, malice, and sheer stupidity to try to pull off credit card fraud on an ex-customer, methinks) and she doesn't have an impeccable integrity, or, now, even the semblance of one.
She doesn't have poise and grace (most commonly conveyed through cool-headedness, wit, and clear diction)

In short, she doesn't have anything remotely special, that might make her stand half a chance in a crowd full of women possessing at least some measure of the above - who have been SELECTED by their countries BECAUSE they possess qualities that stand out.

I can only hazard how she won her crown (hint, it involves a lot of Boomzing).

I don't know. I think I'd choose a well-spoken plain-Jane (plain but not ugly of course) with grace, poise, wit, intelligence, kindness and... a lack of a criminal record... to represent Singapore any day over a... badly-spoken plain-Jane with... none of the above.

I might even go with the first girl over a beautiful but inarticulate, self-centered, graceless, witless and stupid ah-lian... simply because it's all about putting our best foot forwards to the world. As opposed to our worst.

Yes, it's choosing to represent Singapore in a certain light, in a way that perhaps it's not. Our people aren't well-spoken (thank you, Beyonce) as a whole. Yes, it's all wayang.

But every other country out there is doing just the same. And none of those girls who'll appear on stage on the fateful day looks remotely like the average girl from her country, nor sounds or thinks like them. And none of them has a known criminal record.

Because it's impossible to fall in love with someone who is grasping, selfish and deceitful, if even for an instant, sitting at a desk with three other judges - or sitting halfway across the world in a sofa with the remote in your hand.

And that's what Miss World is about - the paragon of womanhood that all humanity falls in love with.

*****
People who lie, who cheat, who steal, who use, who hurt - selfish, self-serving people.
They are common. They are all around. They are the monsters within us set free by owners who love themselves too much.

*****
Talking to a friend the other night we found ourselves agreeing that you must never try to see the best in some people. And that it becomes too late if it gets personal.

I used to want to believe in people. I thought that perhaps being placed in positions of responsibility over other people made people think a certain way, and that maybe it was because people weren't doing much to contribute to other people's lives that they became self-centered and selfish enough to hurt others for their self-gain. Maybe if they did, they would change for the better. I used to think that criminals, given half a chance could be reformed, and that you can't help being born the way you look, the parents you were born to, the neighbourhood you grew up in... maybe if things were different then, well who knows.

I realise now that I was making excuses for them.

The truth is what I learnt living and working in London for the many years that I did.

Some people just steal because they want to - because it gives them a sense of achievement.
Some people just want so much to win, or to be loved, or to be worshipped... anything at all -- that they are willing to lie, cheat, or hurt others for their own gain.

That's just the way it goes.

Some people are just bad. You can't help them - and they don't want to be helped anyway - they want to be bad. And You must never try to see the best in them. Because if you do and it gets personal, then it's too late.

Other people are just ill. You can't help them. They will die ill. That's just the way it is.

Said friend says he can suss out within minutes who is "real" and who is not, and that the real people are few and far between.

They are; and they are precious.

These are people we are the richer for knowing, for however long we know them.
These are people who were good, or who chose to try to be good, or who turned good from bad - because they wanted to.

These are people to keep close; these are people worth remembering.

I came to the (now obvious) cathartic conclusion when I was very young, perhaps ten or so - that we only live life once. And then I had a host of existential worries about the lack of meaning of life; the lack of a reason for life at all, for order in a world doomed to chaos, for darkness in a world of fading light. I felt an overwhelming need to live my life "right", to tread carefully in places of light and avoid the darkness, to never take a step wrong. I was afraid that the darkness would infect and take some meaning away from who I thought of as "me". I thought that in that final moment just before we died... in that moment when we thought back and remembered our pasts, that that would be the clincher. That would be when I knew whether my life had meant anything to me, or not, or whether I had wasted and cheapened it.

Today I still think that the meaning in life is in how we live it. And I know first-hand that the darkness does rub off on me. Perhaps it does detract from some of my life's meaning, perhaps the bad people steal some of it away for themselves.

How we remember it is entirely up to us.

We can choose to remember the good people, and to not dwell on the bad. To remember the people who gave us truths, and forget the ones who lied to us.

******
Sometimes the other half worries that I might still love my past.

Perhaps it was because I was badly hurt when I met her, and having never been betrayed herself she equates the pain and confusion I felt then with love. I was "emo", and
unhappy.

Two of my ex girlfriends lied to and cheated on me.

One had the decency to come clean about it to me; the other didn't have the decency to even admit it to herself.
It hurt me both times, a lot. And it taught me something - about how to react to betrayal, I think. I'm still not quite sure. But it made a few things clearer in my head.

The reasons it hurts when lies start becoming exposed are - as they like to say in medicine - multifactorial. Firstly it shows you just how bad a judge of character you have been - these were bad people, not just at a moment in time but since they were born, the telltale clues were all there all along; Secondly it leaves you wondering just where and when truth ended and falsehood began - or if there was ever any truth at all. Lastly it makes you feel like your life has been cheapened, and some meaning taken away from you.

It's a different feeling to just breaking up with someone on honest terms. It's more than just disappointment, and it has nothing to do with residual love.

It's bad. Evil, almost.

The thing that lingers in your heart and mind isn't the person, but the betrayal; the pain they wrought on someone else without care - while claiming they loved them.

The people are easy to forget; they were betrayers and can never be trusted again. People like this are no good for friendship - much less love.

I made the mistake of trying to be "good" and to do the right thing and find forgiveness in my heart both times. Once I wound up being infected by the darkness and telling what I thought were white lies in the process.

Ironically in the immediate aftermath of the later-day ex I reestablished - if only for a while - contact with the "old testament"-ex and it was her words : these things (ie girls betraying) happen to you because you are too weak - which made me realise just how these people think. (and had me feeling "dirty" for even bothing to reply to that ex again)

How blind they are to the people around them. It takes infinitely more strength to live for someone else than to live for yourself; to inconvenience yourself for their benefit; to back down when you are right and they are wrong. How full of conceit and twisted they must be to feel that things like this are about the strong and the weak, and to borrow a phrase from Ris Low - "all about me!" (...Boomz)

I realised then that the solution is neither forgiveness, nor hatred, nor hoping for karmic retribution in the future, nor being assimilated and going rogue in return.

The solution is moving on and away, forgetting the past. Re-minisce, no more.