water dilute

just realized that blogging is actually a strange phenomenon – it only occurs when one is emotional or thoughtful, seemingly causing a biased representation of oneself. it being an extension of the person is more of an inaccurate portrayal i guess? but zilin has gone fishing still has its drawing power on me, somehow making me believe that anyone who reads this blog carefully would really be able to see through a substantial part of who i am. which brings up the question of why anyone would want to put oneself out there for people to see through so easily – a hidden desire to be understood?

and perhaps this is just one of the many things i will never be able to explain fully as much as i want to.

i once again return to the quote i recorded on this blog about a year ago -

we’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone.
only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion that we are not alone.

- orson welles

sometimes i tell my friends that this quote really touches me like no other quote did, but they are shocked. they comment that it is such a pessimistic view – zeroing on the words “alone” and “illusion”; but i really beg to differ. i have no qualms about directly agreeing with the first sentence – we’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. and i think the most contentious part would probably be “we live alone”. i guess it really depends on how one sees it. for me, i think it is definitely a truth because no matter how well people around know you, or read you, they are never you. we get close to people, our family and our friends, to the point that we can perhaps read them like a book. but can we really say that we know them in entirety? would i dare to say that anyone in this world, besides myself, knows me like i know myself? i certainly would not. no matter how close another person is to us, there remains a gap in understanding that can never be bridged, merely because the other person can never know all your experiences in life, or all your thoughts and desires. so yes, i do believe that we live alone.

going back to why i disagree that it is a pessimistic view, i think it is because i see the words “love” and “friendship” – the “illusion” that we have created is one that is beautiful, an impossibility that we still continue to hope to achieve. though we know that we are alone, we make it a point to create this beautiful “illusion”, giving ourselves up to love and friendship with faith and trust that we can really be beyond alone.

but how do we trust?