Audrey Tan | Exploration of Inquiry & Learning | PlayMoolah

Have you sat there and thought for a minute and asked yourself what you’ve always wanted to do?

I knew I wanted to fly as a child. Always. A friend of mine said, when you dream that you are flying in the middle of your sleep, it’s almost a representation that life’s taking on a new phase or a new chapter for him. I seem to reckon so too. My first voyage!

Here’s presenting,
MK734 flying out
from Palo Alto, CA
Airport!

“Ask and it will be given to you seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7

Take a peak into your perspectives. How do I shape my perspectives about people? How do I see the beauty in the little things around me? Or do I forget that they are there? What do I make out a person’s next steps and intentions be?

What do you see?

As cliche as it sounds, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. What beauty do we choose to see as a result of our experiences, circumstances, the people who have shaped our world and left an impression on us?

Do we choose to see the problems that come our way as imperfections or as opportunities? We define our own imperfections and our own opportunities, circumstances may rule so, but we all have a choice. How we choose to live out the decisions we make, we all have a hand. How far will you go in determining what is worth the mark at the end of the day. I could say, I’ve tried my very best and walked away knowing that the outcomes may be different, but the process well tried, well experienced, well lived.

In Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas he shares, “The only article that Lady Fortuna has no control over is your behaviour.”

I’m trying to learn to see the beauty in things, even in things I find distasteful or unpresentable. But it seems that in the essence of appreciating beauty in the imperfect, that new versions of beauty will emerge out of these newly altered perspective. A problem presented, now thus seen as a manner in which learning is set to take place.

Some introspection for the morning.

So, I have been writing, scribbling, sketching and possibly hammering the keyboard as a measure of writing that we have become so used to. Sheets and sheets of paper fill my room, notebook after notebooks. Occasionally, I use Ommwriter, this one’s a pretty interesting tool that helps one concentrate as they write – something that technology has taken away from us (too many tabs maybe?). Then it occurred, why not go back to basics and attempt to manifest the streams of thoughts in words.

Writing becomes a way to solidify thought processes, concretize and make connections of the insane number of thoughts that run through our heads every minute of every day. The National Science Foundation has some interesting statistics. We think a thousand thoughts per hour. When we write, we think twenty-five hundred thoughts in an hour and a half. The average person thinks about twelve thousand thoughts per day. A deeper thinker, according to this report, puts forth fifty thousand thoughts daily.

What are some of the rituals that we have in our lives? The great thinkers have inspiring daily rituals have one thing in common, they all bring forth ideas of their own, novel ones, unique and independent in thought, almost revolutionary in their own ways.

Writing is time consuming – No doubt about that. What isn’t when it requires thought? And they said, time doesn’t come to you. It’s what you make time for that’s different.

Going back to tradition and the original meaning of consumerism as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, Consumerism is, “The state of an advanced industrial society in which a lot of goods are bought and sold.” ”When too much attention is given to buying and owning thing.” We are all living in an era where consumerism is no longer considered a novel thing, it’s penetrated into our every day lives and let alone can we consider this to have too much emphasis and focus.

Do we find ourselves paying attention to these things? Do we forget that consumerism is bombarding us in our faces everywhere we are, in every part of our lives?

In affluent cities, living in a time where access to capital is readily available, the consumer has a myriad of choices, every second, every minute of every day, to make a purchase, either on impulse or through cautious processing.

Delivery of a game through your mobile phone, transacted in a matter of seconds, purchasing your McDonalds delivery online warrants you a $1 discount off your total purchase, all at our finger tips, all in a matter of clicks and seconds. How do you say No to these conveniences in our purchase behaviours?

I was not spared with my trip in Phuket this weekend, almost a sort of aggressive consumerism I’d say. With the salesmen, young, old, child, adult popping by my beach chair, one by one, all selling different commodities. A walking mall that comes to you, bombarding me with purchases after purchases. It came to a point where I chose not to let our eyes meet, for fear of sending the wrong signals of me falsely seeming interested in making a purchase. It was easy to say No, but hard to ignore.

Looking at what we are used to in affluent cities, the malls we patronize today masquerades as a passive consumerism that unconsciously lingers in our midst. One that we actively choose to walk into the moment we decide to make a trip to the shopping malls. The passive consumerism now turns us to subjects of material temptation. “It’s window shopping”, we’d say. Does that make us sit and ponder why we place ourselves in positions where we endlessly seek the latest and the best, when will we ever have enough?

Our outlook to the awareness of the inherent consumerism that exists today should cause us to settle for some introspection in the things we consume and pursue.

In teaching, I learnt.
In doing, I felt.
In reflecting, I understand.
In being, I become. (Thanks Meng)

The world is at my feet,
I dream, I think and I fleet.

To a heaven with inspirations,
that requires no mention and understanding
beyond the human mind.