A perspective on old age.

It is a privilege to get old - because so many never get the chance.

So, if you are old, and feeling a little less well than you used to - consider the alternative: dying young. Is that really better?

I am middle aged. I have no idea whether I will ever be old one day - but I say from this vantage, I expect to be grateful to have gotten there, if I am so lucky to live so long. I think everyone should because we all, along the way, live to see others die much younger than ourselves having lived lives tantalisingly incomplete and unfulfilled. If a person lives so long that they have fulfilled even one of their dreams and been happy enough along the way, then that is something to be satisfied in. So many have so much less, in life.

Recent events have prompted me to reflect on life and death a bit...hence the motivation for this post. I might write more in another post.

Keep on living!

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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David Hartanto Widjaja: celebrity.

David Hartanto Widjaja has become a posthumous celebrity of some kind. I say this upon observation of the traffic to my blog. You see, since the day news of his death by attempted murder-suicide broke and I wrote of it, about one fifth of the traffic to my blog has arrived with searches for either "David Hartanto Widjaja" or simply "David Widjaja". A few arrive by searching "NTU boy commits suicide over scholarship". I find this really very surprising, for I have been tracking news stories for two years, now - and this is the first that I have written of, that has attracted so much traffic.

I wrote of the death of Heath Ledger - and got a couple of hits a day for a few days after his death. Since mentioning David Hartanto Widjaja's shocking demise, my blog has been inundated with arrivals looking for more information about him.

His story of a despair that a young man could not take and thought fit to throw his life away, over, has become a persistent story - one with a momentum that few stories have. The consequence of this is that David Hartanto Widjaja is actually becoming famous in death. How sad, then, that what he is famous for is the manner of his death. Most who are famous after death, are famous for their lives, not their death. I think, given the significant traffic I am receiving in search of him, that, in some way, David Hartanto Widjaja will never be forgotten. The tale of the NTU boy who tried to kill his lecturer, then killed himself will long be remembered. With it, of course, there is a lesson beneath the tale: a lesson of the extremes to which the Singaporean education system pushes students, extremes which some students just cannot cope with.

I hope that David Hartanto Widjaja's memory is never forgotten. For, as long as we remember his short, tragic life, we may guard against putting our young under too much pressure in the name of academia. There are more important things in life than scholarships, academic achievements and educational status. There is love, there is happiness, there is peace of mind. I don't think that David Hartanto Widjaja felt that he had enough of these - particularly the latter. It seems more than certain that the demands of his course ensured that he had no peace of mind in his final months.

Let our children, then, know peace of mind, happiness and love. Let those be the core of their lives - and not scholarships, awards and grades. The latter accolades are hollow when measured against the things of life that have true worth. Singapore, of all societies, needs to learn this. Otherwise, it is at too much risk of being a hollow society. Oh dear, perhaps it already is...

Rest in Peace, David Hartanto Widjaja.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Merry Christmas 2008

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Christmas, in recent years, has been quite surreal for me. When I grew up, in Europe, Christmases were times of chill weather and gloomy skies, but inner cheer and shared good humour. These days, however, Christmases are times of humid, hot weather (gloomy skies, still!) but with the same inner cheer and good humour, though this time shared not with my family of siblings, but with my new family, of children (and a wife). It is different. The feeling is different. In a way, now, I am looking back at my own childhood Christmases, as I see my own children enjoy theirs. I have become the outsider, looking at my own former Christmases, through the lens of how my children see theirs. It is a good perspective, actually - for now I can both enjoy it from the inside and the outside at the same time. Christmas has become more multi-layered for me.

When I was a child, I don't think I saw my parents' perspective on Christmas. I don't think I saw what they saw. I only saw what I saw. Now, however, I see my own Christmas and that of my children, at the same time. I see what my parents saw, having become a parent myself. It is a much more complex perspective and one that, I think, is informative. It is what comes of becoming a parent in the first place. Life's meaning becomes clearer - but ever more complex. Things that were once seen and enjoyed, as a child, are seen and enjoyed, again, as an adult, seeing the children from the outside. It is the same scene - but it has gathered new meanings, new depths and a new sweetness, that it did not have before.

In a way, Christmas is much more meaningful when you are a parent, than when you are a child. As a parent, Christmas truly becomes about giving, as a child it was largely about receiving. As a parent, Christmas is about the pleasure of others (one's children), as a child it was largely about the pleasure of oneself. As I have grown, so has Christmas. It is now a much larger thing than when I was a child. Of course, I don't feel it with the excited intensity of a young child anticipating the opening of their presents - but I do feel something else: the profundity of the moment, its special character for my children. I am ever aware that, for them, these moments become memories that will accompany them through life. They will refer to these times, later, as they grow up. They will become, for them, a time of nostalgia, a time for remembrance and wistfulness. That, in its way, is a greater pleasure, for a parent, than any Christmas was for me, as a child. You see, we are giving our children a memorable childhood, even as we give them an enjoyable Christmas. So, I think the best gift of all, is not any particular present, but the gift of the childhood, itself, of which this Christmas time is part.

One day, my children, now so focussed on their own experience of the moment, will grow and become parents themselves. Then they will see us, as now I see my own parents. They will come to understand what we did, what we were, how we felt and what it all meant. So, one day, it will all have come full circle, and my children shall be parents and their children shall be enjoying the Christmas they provide. There is a definite poetry and profundity in that. The endless (hopefully) cycle of life has a beauty in it that, at times, people forget - or perhaps never knew. We all become each other, in time. Parents were once children. Children shall one day be parents. In time, all perspectives are seen and life is finally understood. The pity of it, of course, is that, once we have lived long enough to truly understand life, that there is little of it left - we shall be old and the time for remaining reflection and reverie shall be short. Then we shall understand something else: how it feels to say goodbye.

I hope that human lives can become longer so that there is more time to enjoy the insight that comes with age. It is such a treasure to have such wisdom, it seems a great pity that its possession should signal the shortness of time to come. So, if I have one Christmas wish it shall be this: that people should learn how to live longer, so as to enjoy the depth of understanding of life, that comes with age. Such a treasure should be enduring and not fleeting. Perhaps if those that understood life, well, lived longer, all might benefit from their perspective and life would become more meaningful for all. The old are to be valued and not scorned, as some societies seem to do. For only the old have truly had time to see life from all perspectives and come to know what it all means. Though they may be physically weak, they can be strong in understanding - and it is for this that they should be valued.

Merry Xmas to everyone, the world over, who happens to stumble on this Christmas post. In particular, Merry Xmas to any of my family members, anywhere, who happens to read this.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)