Again Thinking

Sunday, October 29, 2006

musings on loss

Loss is and always will be part of the human condition. How we deal with loss will depend in the end on our formative upbringing (our education as the French would put it) and our capacity to absorb and overcome hurt and disappointment and most of all it will depend on the idea we have of ourselves. For some peoples loss can be both of the personal and of the institutional variety with loss of face - being shamed before others - being the worst of all losses. 
 
One day quite a long time ago now, a high Chinese official with whom I was riding in an official car past Tiananmen Square said to me, in response to my statement that they were only students and being young had to be allowed to express themselves, you should understand, it is a question of face.
 
Having grown up in a Chinese community myself in Singapore there was nothing  I could say to that. For if it was a question of face there was nothing more to be said. But I did say something though, that China would pay a high price for keeping face. For the official it was a worthwhile price to pay. The rest is history now.
 
Whether one calls it face or honour there are certain beliefs and feelings that transcend the ordinary, that seem to be regulated by a supra consciousness which sometimes leads us to act in ways that may  be disadvantageous to the self or the community but which seem to be right .
 
To judge such actions from the outside, to impose our own value systems on them may be to misunderstand, to open up conflict. Today I believe we are doing this where an Islam, that feels undervalued and threatened and has the feeling of a loss of face, is concerned. It reacts by retreating into stringent orthodoxy and an insistence on visual symbolism that proclaim its face against all critique.
 
The dignified way a thousand years ago in which the last Emperor of the Southern Tang dynasty  accepted defeat and all that go with capture and loss (including humiliation and his eventual death, it is said by poisoned wine) is therefore all the more astonishing and a valuable lesson.
 
I will let the poem speak for itself.
 
 
softly, softly rain falls
on the terrace and spring returns.
yet, the chill of dawn penetrates a single layer of silk:
unaware, i woke, unaware, i was
captured,
to live a guest with lavish
entertainment
the memory numb, till this morning
on the terrace i was confronted
by an endless mountain of spring

to depart was so easy,
to return no longer possible;
a flower that has fallen
into a flowing stream

can never reach its home
heaven was my home

 

from The poems and lyrics of The Last Lord Lee,

translated by Koh Ho Ping and Chandran Nair

Woodrose Publications Singapore,1975

Powered By Qumana
|| chandrannair, 5:13 pm

0 Comments:

Add a comment