Wisdom
Despite my father being much wiser than he looks to be, he does get surprised by random quotes of wisdom from people which in hindsight is nothing really surprising upon reconsideration. For example, while we were in Vietnam my friend's father told my father that experience in Chinese was 经验(jing yan) which in simplified form means 'an undertaking under inspection', to which my father was astonished by this token of wisdom.
I myself was rather taken aback by this, as it seemed merely to be the obvious and something that my father surely would have known far before. What is an experience to an individual if one was not to reevaluate this memory and learn from it? My father was the patriarch in the family, and of course my mother followed suit in his bewilderment. My mother abhors all forms of philosophy as she is convinced that it leads to nothing but unhappiness (and I must admit that in some ways it is true) and she'd rather be ignorant of the truth of life, whatever that may turn out to be. Thus for her this nugget of information may be new to her, but I don't think she would be very interested had she found out whether by her lonesome or by another party.
I spent the rest of the holiday and, I must admit, a bit of the time that I was here back in Singapore wondering why one would be so surprised at something already known. It was then that I found the answer, which made me respect my father all the more should my theory prove to be true. My father acted surprised in a form of flattery to the person giving it, playing the subordinate role for a hidden purpose. Should this prove to be true, it would mean that my father found himself shallow enough to put on the facade that I am so frequent to doing for conceited purposes.
Whether my theory works or not will be a mystery to me, but both answers both have daunting implications.
Cheers,
Matthew Tan
I myself was rather taken aback by this, as it seemed merely to be the obvious and something that my father surely would have known far before. What is an experience to an individual if one was not to reevaluate this memory and learn from it? My father was the patriarch in the family, and of course my mother followed suit in his bewilderment. My mother abhors all forms of philosophy as she is convinced that it leads to nothing but unhappiness (and I must admit that in some ways it is true) and she'd rather be ignorant of the truth of life, whatever that may turn out to be. Thus for her this nugget of information may be new to her, but I don't think she would be very interested had she found out whether by her lonesome or by another party.
I spent the rest of the holiday and, I must admit, a bit of the time that I was here back in Singapore wondering why one would be so surprised at something already known. It was then that I found the answer, which made me respect my father all the more should my theory prove to be true. My father acted surprised in a form of flattery to the person giving it, playing the subordinate role for a hidden purpose. Should this prove to be true, it would mean that my father found himself shallow enough to put on the facade that I am so frequent to doing for conceited purposes.
Whether my theory works or not will be a mystery to me, but both answers both have daunting implications.
Cheers,
Matthew Tan
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